The machinations made Succession look like an episode of Blue Peter. As soon as he’s back in No 10 the knives are out, wielded mostly by his own MPs, especially those around Gordon Brown, who appears to be the only person still claiming he had nothing to do with forcing Blair to step down.
The long goodbye begins in May 2006 with Tony Blair’s third election victory. This week, Christian’s (Gamba Cole) county lines heist results in serious fallout. Superb casting (even Christopher Walken doesn’t look too out of place) and a well-crafted script make this comedy drama, about a group of hopeless cases doing community service in Bristol, good fun. The Super Yoke Carry and the Car Deadlift Hold await the contestants, including defending champion Gavin “The Bull” Bilton, as they make a bid for a place in the quarter-finals of this three-day competition. Coronation Street, Doctors, EastEnders, Emmerdale, Casualty, Holby City and Hollyoaks all have specially filmed scenes and, for the first time ever, make reference to each other with characters popping up in rival shows to debate eco-issues. To mark COP26, the nation’s soaps join forces to highlight the climate crisis. The tournament gets underway at the Marshall Arena in Milton Keynes. Judd Trump defeated Neil Robertson 9-8 in last year’s final, but Ronnie O’Sullivan will also be eyeing up a second title having won in 2017.
It’s a poignant and timely documentary as we gear up for COP26. Dench, who previously tracked the 4,300-mile migration of Bewick’s swans from Russia to Britain on a paramotor, is a persuasive advocate and Lumley – who stays mostly at ground level chasing around in a support vehicle – oozes support for the cause. Still there are good news stories here too (like that of the volunteers Dench drops in on, who go out in large groups to clear the beaches of the Gower Peninsula of plastic litter) and the climate messaging certainly comes through. So, try as one might, it is hard not to spend much of the film on edge, anticipating a terrible accident. At the outset, Lumley points out that, during the making of the film, Dench’s support pilot on the project, Dan Burton, died when the two of them collided mid-air. A shadow hangs over this documentary in which Joanna Lumley follows an attempt by climate activist Sacha “the human swan” Dench, to fly 3,000 miles around Britain on a green-electricity-powered paramotor (a motorised parachute driven by a propellor strapped to the pilot’s back) to raise awareness about the climate emergency.
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