Citadel (Amazon Prime Video)
Malpractice (ITVX) | itv.com
The Curse (Channel 4) | channel4.com
The Mysterious Mr Lagerfeld (BBC Two) | iPlayer
A hurtling train. The black outline of a man falling through fiery, Lucozade-hued water. An elite collective (Manticore) vowing to bring down Citadel, a network of secret agents devoted to global “safety and security”. It must be a new spy thriller series. And going by the first two episodes of David Weil’s six-part Citadel on Amazon Prime Video, an old-school (red-blooded, sexy) one at that.
Forget the knackered beta charm of Slow Horses, in which Gary Oldman’s tobacco-stained Jackson Lamb wheezes around the place like his lungs are on loan from the Chernobyl props department; Citadel is defiantly, sometimes exhaustingly alpha. As well as buff, square-jawed agent Mason Kane (a sharp-suited, smouldering Richard Madden), there is his scarlet-garbed, femme fatale colleague Nadia Sinh (Priyanka Chopra Jonas).
At first, when Kane and Sinh collide you think it’s a standard testosterone-oestrogen meet-cute, but it isn’t long before they’re leadenly flirting/sniping the way characters do when they have history. To cut a high-octane, blood-spurting, eardrum-lacerating story short, the mission doesn’t go as planned. Eight years later, stricken with convenient amnesia, they are yanked back by Stanley Tucci’s deadpan controller to Citadel HQ, which naturally resembles something the CIA and Grand Designs vomited up together.
Executive produced by Anthony and Joseph Russo of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Citadel is intended as a franchise, with spin-offs in different territories, and it shows. Hyperreal and rowdy, the opening scenes play out like a Tarantino homage to David Leitch’s film Bullet Train.
As it progresses, there are times when Citadel feels like 007: The ChatGPT Years, doling out cliches like an espionage-themed vending machine. Mega-violence; people running with pumping arms; “memory data”; hyperactive hopping around global locations/time zones. There’s even a central-casting British baddie, albeit played wonderfully by a near sulphurous Lesley Manville.
Still, subtlety, be damned: if spy thrillers are your bag, this show is stylish, full throttle and knows how to have a good time.
Over on ITV, from the production stable that brought you Line of Duty, there’s Malpractice, a new five-part medical thriller, directed by Philip Barantini, who was behind Boiling Point and last year’s superb Merseyside police drama The Responder. It’s written by Grace Ofori-Attah, a medic turned screenwriter in the mould of Jed Mercurio (who, pre-LOD, did Cardiac Arrest and Bodies) and Adam Kay (This Is Going to Hurt).
Niamh Algar plays Lucinda Edwards, a talented and frazzled A&E doctor who’s on duty – and in charge – when a patient dies of an opioid overdose. She’s investigated by the coolly intimidating Medical Investigation Unit (MIU), led by Helen Behan and Jordan Kouamé (both excellent). What initially appears to be a routine tragedy starts to look murky: strange timings; altered patient notes; a culture of illegal drug prescriptions.
Malpractice starts strongly, with candid, fast-paced hospital scenes. But before long –the whole series is available to stream – it buckles. Hands are shown far too soon. Investigators barge bizarrely around busy wards barking questions. Sociopolitical nods to the stresses put on the NHS by the pandemic seem a tad tacked-on. A major incident involving busy city traffic somehow evades the attention of witnesses and CCTV, despite occurring in broad daylight.
For all that, Malpractice is watchable, with strongly drawn characters. Algar makes a great fist of the impressive but jittery and compromised medic, increasingly reliant on her boss (James Purefoy) to vouch for her. She’s surrounded by credibly exasperated NHS staff (including Hannah Walters and Priyanka Patel). As the investigation gets under way, the formal MIU interviews are sharply honed, exciting and, yes, reminiscent of a medical-themed Line of Duty.
Over to Channel 4 for the second series of The Curse, a comedic riff on a multimillion gold bullion heist pulled off by bungling misfits (loosely nodding to the 1983 Brinks-Mat robbery, which was turned into the recent well-received BBC thriller The Gold). Directed by James De Frond, it’s created by and stars the Bafta-winning People Just Do Nothing team (Steve Stamp, Allan Mustafa, Hugo Chegwin), with Tom Davis co-starring and co-writing.
At the end of last year’s first series (spoiler alert), Big Mick (Davis) was apprehended, Phil (Chegwin) was left for dead and hapless Albert (Mustafa), his tough, smart wife Tash (the glorious Emer Kenny) and her brother, Sidney (Stamp), escaped to the non-extradition “Costa del Crime” in Spain. This is where we rejoin them: pregnant Tash and Albert running the Golden Palms hotel, and Sidney operating a beach bar. The resting vibe is Sexy Beast with extra gormlessness and even pinker sunburn. And then things turn nasty.
The Curse is genuinely funny. The ineptitude of the thieves is set against the nastiness of the real villains (including Michael Smiley) and the cynicism of the police, led by Geoff Bell in dishevelled, 60-a-day Sweeney mode. In Big Mick, Davis has created a touching comedy ogre – this time squeezed into disquietingly tight beachwear (my eyes!), but still with an extraordinary voice that sounds like he’s gargling marbles and Evo-Stik. If you haven’t seen The Curse, check it out: the first series (just) edges it, but it’s still (pun intended) comedy gold.
There are times, watching feature-length Arena documentary The Mysterious Mr Lagerfeld (BBC Two), when you feel sucked into the orbit of a real-life Zoolander. Director Michael Waldman peeks behind the carefully crafted carapace of the late German fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld (who died in 2019), with help from such interviewees as photographer Ellen von Unwerth.
This is a breathless whirl through Lagerfeld’s life: art, love, finances, his beloved white “diva” cat, Choupette. I’d have preferred more on Lagerfeld’s innovative work. The brief glimpses of his runway themes (everything from supermarkets to Versailles) look stunning. Still, Waldman is brilliantly forward about startling interviewees, with questions about the designer’s unresolved will: “Can I ask a direct question?”
The result is an affectionate documentary-slash-attempted unmasking of “the true face of the man behind the sunglasses”. Does Waldman succeed? I’m not sure. The constant allusions to Lagerfeld’s close-knit circle say it all: like many a gifted control freak, he seemed to prefer things kept as tight as a pistachio nut.
Star ratings (out of five)
Citadel ★★★
Malpractice ★★★
The Curse ★★★★
The Mysterious Mr Lagerfeld ★★★
What else I’m watching
I’m a Celebrity… South Africa
(ITVX)
The first-ever “all-stars” series features former contestants, among them Shaun Ryder and Janice Dickinson. At first glance it’s a mite flat. Pre-recorded at Kruger National Park, there’s no public vote for trials/expulsions. Where’s the fun in that?
Guilt
(BBC Two)
Third and final series of The Gold creator Neil Forsyth’s tar-black Scottish psychodrama. The preternaturally disparate McCall brothers (Mark Bonnar and Jamie Sives) face familiar and unfamiliar foes.
Drops of God
(Apple TV+)
A French-Japanese drama (based on a cult Japanese graphic novel) about a young woman who must rediscover wine-appreciation to get her inheritance. Think the vino obsession of Sideways with a manga-themed flourish.
