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Boat story
Family
What would you do? If you were walking the dog and found a truck full of cocaine next to some corpses on a deserted beach, would you ignore the bodies and steal the drugs?
It’s a ridiculous question. Writers Jack and Harry Williams have no intention of taking it seriously. What they’re really asking is… ‘Yes, but what if?’
No other British screenwriter dares to do this, testing the limits of credibility in the opening credits and then continuing to stretch them. Boat Story (BBC1) presents us with the highly improbable from the start, with three children peering excitedly at a severed head in a field. It’s like the Just William version of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
To add to the surreality, Icelandic star Olafur Darri Olafsson narrates the scene as if it were a fairy tale. Who he is and why he tells us this gruesome story has not yet been explained.
The gore continues when we are introduced to Janet (Daisy Haggard), who works in a metal pressing factory – or did, until a mistake by her foreman cost her all the fingers on one hand. Nothing is spared: the crushed, mutilated fingers, the buckets of blood and later the half-healed stump. Luckily my nerves have been steeled by the endless episodes of 24 Hours In A&E, otherwise I might have fainted.
What would you do? If you were walking the dog and found a truck full of cocaine next to some corpses on a deserted beach, would you ignore the bodies and steal the drugs?
No other British screenwriter other than Jack and Harry Williams dares to do this, testing the limits of credibility in the opening credits and then continuing to stretch them.
To further enhance the surreality of Boat Story, Icelandic star Olafur Darri Olafsson narrates the scene as if it were a fairy tale
By the time two masked killers burst into a police station and blast their way across all floors, the bloodshed knows no bounds. If Quentin Tarantino were to direct a zombie movie, you wouldn’t see so many bodies being blown apart by shotguns.
Before the carnage begins, we meet two police officers in training who are about to become lovers, and for a minute or two it seems as if they might escape the carnage. . . but no. Whatever else this series has to offer us, we will not see the young dream of love.
The Williams brothers, who are also the directors, can play with video game violence because they have two television superpowers. One of these is the ability to draw complex, sympathetic characters with a few deft strokes. Janet is a frustrated artist, a loving stepmother, a lonely but resourceful woman who loves dogs and doesn’t trust people.
Her partner in drug crime is Samuel, played by Paterson Joseph, who harbors so many secrets that he’s pitifully grateful for an excuse to blurt them all out to Janet.
Both actors have unusually expressive faces, and the tricks they use to express their disbelief at their situation are deliberately comic. That’s the writers’ other asset: they can attract a great cast. So far we’ve seen little more than glimpses of Joanna Scanlan and Jonas Armstrong, both of whom will surely make more appearances as the six-part series unfolds.
Tcheky Karyo, best known as detective Julien Baptiste, plays an exciting cold-blooded psycho drug lord, tortures an informant in the back room of his tailor shop and then takes off in his private plane to retrieve his mountain of stolen cocaine.
Aidan Gillen counts mountains of drug money in Kin (BBC1), a more conventional thriller that also features a strong cast (including Ciaran Hinds and Emmett J. Scanlan) and which might deserve five stars itself, were it not necessary to emphasize how uniquely good boat story.
This Irish series started with a double bill and continues on Tuesday. The story of a local crime family confronted with a takeover bid by an international company is told with great pace and perseverance. . . not to mention beards and man buns.
Some plot twists are communicated well in advance, though it’s satisfying to see the tension build before each crisis. If you liked Gangs Of London, there’s the same atmosphere here.