TV boxsets of the week: Back to Life, The Office, Giri/Haji

Back to Life

Available on BBC iPlayer, review by Yvette Huddleston

This dark and quirky six-part comedy-drama series co-written by and starring Daisy Haggard first aired on BBC3 last year and is now available on iPlayer.

Haggard plays Miri Matteson who returns home after 18 years in prison. The length of her jail sentence suggests that whatever crime she committed, it was fairly serious, but that is carefully kept from the audience through skilful scriptwriting that slowly teases out the truth in the final stages of the series.

Miri goes back to live with her parents – played by Geraldine James and Richard Durden – in the seaside town she left as a teenager. She no longer recognises the place, and a lot has changed in the world in general in the time she has been away.

There is a moving scene in which she enters her childhood bedroom and reverts to a younger, more innocent version of herself, but she is not allowed to forget that she is an ex-con – she is vilified around town, struggles to get a job and her parents are unsure how to behave with her.

People are generally trying their best to do the right thing, especially Miri. And potential romance comes along in the form of kind, gentle neighbour Billy (Adeel Akhtar), who recognises a vulnerability and a spark in Miri that he finds intriguing.

The Office: An American Workplace

Available on Netflix, review by Nick Ahad

Sacrilege to choose a pale American imitation ahead of the British original? Hear me out.

George Bernard Shaw observed that Britain and America are “two nations separated by a common language” and nowhere is this more demonstrably true than in the two versions of The Office.

The original is a masterpiece, and you may well have struggled to get past episode one of the US version starring Steve Carrell because it is a facsimile of the original first episode and it is toe-curlingly awful.

The cynicism doesn’t work in American accents. Get past that first episode and you will be rewarded with a TV series that is bigger, broader, funnier, and importantly right now, more sentimental and feelgood than the original by a factor of approximately 9,986,000 (when you get to season seven, episode 21, that will make sense).

While Brits are Hugh Grant struggling to say “I love you”, Americans are all heart-on-their-star-spangled-sleeves and a lot of heart went into making The Office (US).

Giri/Haji

Available on Netflix, review by Yvette Huddleston

Set in London and Tokyo, with English and Japanese dialogue, this stylish crime thriller, written by Joe (Humans) Barton, was first broadcast on the BBC last autumn and is now streaming on Netflix.

Japanese detective Kenzo Mori (Takehiro Hira) is despatched to the English capital by his superiors to take part in an international police exchange programme. However, this is cover for his true mission which is to track down his missing younger brother Yuto (Yōsuke Kubozuka), a former Yakuza gangster who has upset his bosses and is now on the run.

While in the UK, Kenzo is befriended by Met police officer Sarah Weitzmann (Kelly Macdonald), a lecturer on the course he is attending and an outsider on her team.

The early scenes in Tokyo indicate that Kenzo’s marriage is not a particularly happy one and the chemistry between him and Sarah gently bubbles underneath the narrative.

Meanwhile Kenzo’s feisty teenage daughter Taki decides to follow her father to London, without telling her mother or grandparents, and Yuto’s lover (the daughter of a Yakuza boss) is pregnant with his child and desperate to see him again.

Barton constructs a rich, layered storyline, elegantly weaving together the various plot threads with great style and ingenuity, and he navigates the cultural differences with humour and humanity, avoiding any crass stereotyping. The performances from the talented British and Japanese cast are all first class.

And it’s not giving anything away to say that it has one of the most surprising and original finales to a crime thriller that you are ever likely to see. Superb.

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