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TV PREVIEWS
Martina Cole's The Take, Wednesday 9pm, Sky1
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Tom Hardy seems to be on a mission to play the most unpleasant characters he can find. In Channel 4's Cape Wrath, he was the heavy-breathing local murderer, in the BBC's Stuart: A Life Backwards, he was a violent homeless sociopath, and more recently, cinema-goers may have seen him as Britain's most dangerous prisoner in Bronson. Oh, and guess who's landed the part of the brooding Heathcliff in ITV's new Wuthering Heights adaptation? (We can probably expect to see the romantic hero’s darker side explored to the full.)
Hardy's latest guise is another bad 'un. Sky1's new four-part adaptation of Martina Cole's best-seller introduces Freddie Jackson, an East End criminal with a rictus grin and a tendency to try to change things he doesn't like through sheer molten aggression.
We meet Freddie in 1984 as he leaves prison, to the strains of AC/DC's 'Back in Black' – yeah, it's that kind of drama – and see him arriving home to loyal wife Jackie. "He's got plans for us," she says to her friend Maggie, optimistically.
Freddie's plans apparently involve groping Maggie, who's also the girlfriend of his wide-eyed cousin Jimmy, at his homecoming party and then jumping head-first back into the criminal underworld by smashing a former associate's head through a television screen. "He always wanted to be on TV," notes Freddie, ignoring the fact that his victim is very much in TV.
It's well-shot, classy-looking and all the performances are convincing enough, but, as Freddie gets deeper in, you can't help feeling we've been down this route 1,000 times before – there's the wronged but loyal wife, the faithful right-hand man who will eventually get fed up with his leader's excesses, and countless other instances of unoriginality.
There are moments when The Take seems to be trying to give its own, um, take on British social history, in the style of mid-90s TV masterpiece Our Friends in the North – but it's mainly pretty conventional fare. Still, good fun – and another one for Tom Hardy's scrapbook of villainy.
by Will Parkhouse, Wednesday 17 June 2009
Picture: Sky1
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