Criminal Justice, BBC1

The opening half-an-hour of Criminal Justice was astonishing. Astonishingly acted, astonishingly observed and astonishingly original.

Two ostensibly disparate narrative threads began: a handsome, erudite barrister delivered an eloquent, and damning, soliloquy at the conclusion of a murder trial, before relaxing afterwards, joking with his friends, and going out for a jog to train for the London Marathon he was running for charity.

Meanwhile, a trembling woman dashed frenetically about her home, and then after she went out for a drive she abruptly changed direction and went to a house where she was greeted sympathetically by a man. Later, she had a shower and curiously cleansed the shower screen for every last smear, every little last mark of evidence that she had taken a shower.

It was obvious that the two strands would soon entwine, but how? The barrister Joe Miller (Matthew Macfadyen) made a phone call, which was received by the woman, Juliet (Maxine Peake), who was evidently his wife. Why did she refuse to answer? Joe, we had seen, was a thoroughly decent bloke – maybe the problem was with her? Was she guilty about some misdemeanour?

Perceptions began to alter as Joe bought some drugs from some shifty looking characters under a bridge. His run was simply a ruse to purchase drugs. A cliché, perhaps, in drawing characters that associates blank evil with narcotics, but in this vivid scenario perfectly apt.

Arriving home Joe greets his wife warmly, giving her a bunch of flowers – again an acute detail; flowers are so often the insensitive husband’s way of telling his wife he loves her as though she were a cartoon facsimile of femininity. And indeed, Joe declares his love for Juliet not as an expression of affection but as a rattle of the chain; you can almost hear the vowels contracting in his throat as he tightens the leash.

She is palpably terrified. Working on the laptop, she shuts the lid and wipes the history, and when he asks what she was doing she claims to have been reading emails. When she’s gone out he checks the laptop, observing that the latest emails are unopened. She’s lying. He deliberately leaves the laptop lid up to indicate he knows she’s been lying.

After deducing that Juliet went out earlier in the day – from noticing a smear on the shower screen – he concocts a ruse to visit the supermarket where Juliet claims she went earlier. Their daughter Ella (Alice Sykes) and her friend Katie are happily playing upstairs.

Getting into the car, Joe takes out a notebook and writes down the mileage, drives to the supermarket and notes down the distance, comparing it to an earlier figure. Later on, he offers to give Katie a lift home. Again noting the distance he infers that Juliet had visited Katie’s home, and Katie’s dad is the man we saw earlier. And then through protracted silences worthy of Pinter, Macfadyen conveys a horrid menace towards Katie’s dad, eventually suggesting they meet for squash. Again transmitting threat through the most banal of activities.

Arriving home, Juliet is trembling. She knows Joe is aware of her lies. He puts Ella to bed, suggesting she wears headphones to help her sleep when it’s obvious it’s to deafen her to her mother’s torment.

And the abuse is far more horrific than you imagined. Cognisant of criminal law, Joe doesn’t abuse her with the mindless violence we later hear about from Juliet’s cellmate after she’s arrested. He uses the antiquated conjugal right of a man to have sex with his wife, although he performs it anally to hurt and humiliate her in the knowledge that it is difficult enough for a rape conviction to be secured between two strangers, and almost impossible for a married couple. Like a true ‘professional’ he leaves no evidence of physical abuse, only bruising that could be explained away in a relationship between any normal loving couple – and he does love her, remember the flowers? Unable to take any more, she stabs him with a kitchen knife and runs out into the street. Ella pulls the knife from her beloved dad’s abdomen and the police and ambulance service arrive.

It isn’t to say what followed was bad, merely that the standard of drama slipped from the brilliant to the very good. And it’s because the viewer’s perceptions had been heightened by the opening chapter that the ensuing flaws were more apparent.

The set-up is quite conventional. The police must investigate to discover what the viewer already knows about Joe’s abuse of his wife. The frustration is encapsulated by the vaguely misogynistic DI Sexton (Steve MacIntosh) who thinks Juliet murdered her husband in cold blood and interprets each new crumb of evidence towards his own end.

Against this is DI Faber (Denis Lawson), who is far more methodical than his deputy and is dubious about Joe’s gleaming professional and personal reputation. This of course injects conflict into the vacuum which would usually be between the victim and antagonist – with Juliet too timid presently to reveal exactly what Joe did to her and with Joe having expired at the end of episode two.

Meanwhile, Juliet’s solicitor Jack (Sophie Okenedo) and barrister Anna (Zoe Telford) must draw the story from the guilt-ridden Juliet who, after the rejection by Ella, seems to want to be punished for her actions.

It’s all well written and acted, but lacks the earlier originality and excellence, and as a consequence the further the ripples spread out from the façade of happy domesticity of Joe and Juliet the less beguiling it becomes. We hope that this is just a lull and that the inevitable court case is true to its high standards and that it doesn’t descend into a struggle between right and wrong that serves first to frustrate the viewer and only secondly run true to the events of the opening half-hour.

The TV Week - Saturday 10th - Friday 16th October

Saturday
7.00pm You've Been Framed ITV1
7.30pm Harry Hill's TV Burp ITV1
10.00pm Peirs Morgan's Life Stories ITV1 - Second series of the chatshow
Sunday
10.15pm The South Bank Show ITV1 - A look at Pixar
Monday
9.00pm Life BBC1- David Attenborough narrates a wildlife series. In nature, living long enough to breed is a monumental struggle, and many animals and plants go to extremes to give themselves a chance. Three brother cheetahs band together to bring down a huge ostrich, bottle-nosed dolphins trap fish in a ring of mud, the Strawberry frog carries a tadpole high into a tree and drops it in a water-filled bromeliad, and chinstrap penguins undertake a heroic and tragic journey through the broken ice to get out to sea.
Tuesday
8.00pm Nature Shock Five - Third series of the nature series starting with the The Whale and the Great White.
9.00pm Around the World in Eighty-Days BBC1 - In a re-enactment of Jules Verne's literary odyssey, six pairs of celebrities race against the clock to raise money for 2009's BBC Children in Need. They form a global relay to circumnavigate the world in 80 days without flying. The first leg of this epic journey sees Frank Skinner and Lee Mack travelling from the Reform Club in London to Turkey.
9.00pm Joan Collins does Glamour ITV1 - The actress makes over British families starting with three generations of one Plymouth family. Gran Eileen and mum Mary want to look the best they can for daughter Holli's 16th birthday party. Joan believes that being glamorous does not have involve bags of time and money.
9.00pm The Force Channel 4 - Three-part documentary series following the work of the Hampshire Constabulary.
10.35pm Dishing the Dirt ITV1 - Series which takes a critical look at Britain's seventy billion pound food industry and examines what really goes on behind closed doors in restaurants and takeaways.
Thursday
8.00pm Modern Family Sky1 - New American comedy series cellebrating the drama and dysfunction of three left-field families.
9.00pm Cutting Edge: The Red Lion Channel 4 - Filmaker Sue Bourne looks into the plight of Britain's Pub industry.
10.00pm Hung More4 - American Comedy/drama former following high school sports legend; now a 40-something basketball coach, and an embittered shadow of the man he once was. The team he coaches is on a losing streak, his wife has left him for a wealthy dermatologist and he is struggling to provide for his teenage kids.
10.55pm Curb Your Enthusiasm More4 - The seventh series of the Comedy series starring Larry Daivd.
Friday
9.00pm Have I Got News For You? BBC1 - Return of the news quiz with guest host Martin Clunes.
9.30pm The Armstrong & Miller Show BBC1 - Second series of the sketch show starring Ben Miller and Alexander Armstrong.

Never Mind The Buzzcocks, BBC2

George Lamb, so much to answer for. While the Jonah of the airwaves was blessedly absent from Buzzcocks, his baleful legacy was not. Excused as the progenitor, Lamb is definitely the pernicious propagator of the odious audience coercion trend mindlessly employed by the otherwise tolerable James Corden.

Aghast at the comprehensible apathy of the audience at the announcement that Enemy singer Tom Clarke had just purcahsed a farm, Corden turned sharply to them: “Tom’s just bought a farm, ladies and gentlemen!” (lightened by Ben Miller’s acidic quip). Then enunciating the same banality for Paloma Faith’s outfit. What sinks the fangs of irritation deeper is the appendage of ‘ladies and gentlemen’ as though awarding such worthless accomplishments commendable of a place at the London Variety Show.

Aside from the rejugged theme tune (which sounds like a febrile Guitar Hero player overdosing on the wah-wah peddle to align the crescendo of his axe solo to the dam-busting gush of his solo ejaculation), the other fresh elements of the show were welcome.

Noel Fielding is an apposite yet opposite substitute for Bill Bailey. Whether charming Paloma Faith with adoring jokes about giving her chunks of a rainbow as a present or saying she resembled “a children’s bull fighter” he was always funny.

Meanwhile, Corden selflessly took the Phill Jupitus role of laughing heartily at an unfunny gag by one of the guests, in this case Tom Clarke, who looked as if he’s been replaced by a voodoo doll with his unkempt hair threatening to devour his shrunken head under its menacing spines.

Janeane Garofalo seemed more focused on winning than being funny, collapsing into a puddle of contrition when failing to guess the correct next line of Toto’a Africa, and she sported grotesque tattoos worse than you’d find in the dressing room of a village rugby club.

The format remains the same, with Sorry No Refunds consuming about half of the show. Usually this isn’t a problem, only this time Corden and Jupitus’ team had to regurgitate jokes about Blue from 2002; a band uniquely emblematic of the nauseating tidal wave of parasitical celebrities. However brief their musical appearance it served as an apt reminder that every second spent listening to a Blue song is a second that could have been so much more profitably spent not listening to a Blue song.

While guest hosts are confirmed for this series, it’s hoped that Buzzcocks can learn from the error of Have I Got News For You, which has endured seven uneven years because of the persistent folly of changing presenters each week. If not, there are always repeats of Mock The Week on Dave.