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This was excellent, watched the 1st part lst night - Robbie Coltraine was great, bit of a dodgy accent from Julie Walters but i will let her off! its in 4 parts
The subject of historical abuse of children by famous entertainers is so raw that the potential for a television drama to get it awfully wrong is considerable. It has fallen to Jack Thorne, the writer of the moment behind West End mega‑hit Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, to tackle it in Channel 4’s National Treasure. After one episode of four, the result feels like a hefty landmark drama that favours troubling psychological complexity over soothing moral platitudes.
The great coup of Thorne’s script is to lure Robbie Coltrane back to British television for the first time in a decade to play Paul Finchley, an old-time TV comic who one day gets a knock on the door from the police. He has been accused of raping a woman in the Nineties. “They think I’m Jimmy Savile,” he scowls, protesting his innocence. In at least one sense he isn’t Savile: his victim is not underage, but once his mug is on the front page of the redtops other women soon come forward.
Robbie Coltrane: back on British TV after a decade Credit: Aimee Spinks
The first time we clap eyes on Finchley he’s presenting a lifetime achievement award to his long‑term partner Karl Jenkins (Tim McInnerny). The venue’s underground corridor looks like a prison, a portent of what perhaps awaits. The instinctive and anti-judicial assumption on these occasions is that there’s no smoke without fire. Finchley’s laptop and phone reveal a long back catalogue of X-rated browsing, while he’s content to own up to his devoutly Catholic wife Marie (Julie Walters) an inveterate record of casual extramarital sex, some of it paid for.
But is he capable of rape? Extreme close-ups probe his vast face for the truth, but so far we have no idea. Coltrane exudes enough vulnerability, apparently genuine, that it’s not even clear whether you should crave his guilt. It’s thrilling to have Coltrane back, wry and wheezing, propped up by a walking cane and bravely exposing a stout pair of moobs. Because he’s been barely visible outside Hogwarts for so long, he somehow exudes the wrinkled aura of a has-been, like all those faded celebs investigated by Operation Yewtree.
'Audacious, disturbing but above all elusive': National Treasure Credit: Aimee Spinks
The camera wanders about as if not sure where to look or who to believe. Thorne’s script feels like something Alan Bleasdale wrote for the same channel in his pomp. It’s audacious, disturbing but above all elusive. Why does Finchley’s wife tolerate his philandering? What’s wrong with Dee, the Finchleys’ daughter, who is in a halfway house for recovering addicts? Andrea Riseborough, also back doing a British TV drama for the first time in years, bewitchingly plays her as a wounded pretender, all gimlet eyes, horrible hair, and a gothic vault of unreliable memories.
Perhaps as National Treasure unfolds we’ll find out something about ourselves: why the historic misdemeanours of old entertainers caused such a convulsion to the British psyche, why in this area we hasten to eschew the principle of presumed innocence. This is an utterly compelling case of wait and see.
The subject of historical abuse of children by famous entertainers is so raw that the potential for a television drama to get it awfully wrong is considerable. It has fallen to Jack Thorne, the writer of the moment behind West End mega‑hit Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, to tackle it in Channel 4’s National Treasure. After one episode of four, the result feels like a hefty landmark drama that favours troubling psychological complexity over soothing moral platitudes.
The great coup of Thorne’s script is to lure Robbie Coltrane back to British television for the first time in a decade to play Paul Finchley, an old-time TV comic who one day gets a knock on the door from the police. He has been accused of raping a woman in the Nineties. “They think I’m Jimmy Savile,” he scowls, protesting his innocence. In at least one sense he isn’t Savile: his victim is not underage, but once his mug is on the front page of the redtops other women soon come forward.
Robbie Coltrane: back on British TV after a decade Credit: Aimee Spinks
The first time we clap eyes on Finchley he’s presenting a lifetime achievement award to his long‑term partner Karl Jenkins (Tim McInnerny). The venue’s underground corridor looks like a prison, a portent of what perhaps awaits. The instinctive and anti-judicial assumption on these occasions is that there’s no smoke without fire. Finchley’s laptop and phone reveal a long back catalogue of X-rated browsing, while he’s content to own up to his devoutly Catholic wife Marie (Julie Walters) an inveterate record of casual extramarital sex, some of it paid for.
But is he capable of rape? Extreme close-ups probe his vast face for the truth, but so far we have no idea. Coltrane exudes enough vulnerability, apparently genuine, that it’s not even clear whether you should crave his guilt. It’s thrilling to have Coltrane back, wry and wheezing, propped up by a walking cane and bravely exposing a stout pair of moobs. Because he’s been barely visible outside Hogwarts for so long, he somehow exudes the wrinkled aura of a has-been, like all those faded celebs investigated by Operation Yewtree.
'Audacious, disturbing but above all elusive': National Treasure Credit: Aimee Spinks
The camera wanders about as if not sure where to look or who to believe. Thorne’s script feels like something Alan Bleasdale wrote for the same channel in his pomp. It’s audacious, disturbing but above all elusive. Why does Finchley’s wife tolerate his philandering? What’s wrong with Dee, the Finchleys’ daughter, who is in a halfway house for recovering addicts? Andrea Riseborough, also back doing a British TV drama for the first time in years, bewitchingly plays her as a wounded pretender, all gimlet eyes, horrible hair, and a gothic vault of unreliable memories.
Perhaps as National Treasure unfolds we’ll find out something about ourselves: why the historic misdemeanours of old entertainers caused such a convulsion to the British psyche, why in this area we hasten to eschew the principle of presumed innocence. This is an utterly compelling case of wait and see.
Must try and catch-up with it at some point. 