Very little about The Outlaws (BBC One) could surprise more than its casting of esteemed US character actor and perennial gangster/bad guy figure Christopher Walken.
He plays a wily, cheque-forging, ex-con granddad on a Community Payback scheme in modern day Bristol.
The first of the show’s six episodes was a pleasing prime-time watch, given that The Office and Extras’ co-creator Stephen Merchant stars and once-again co-created, this time with Mayans MC’s Elgin James.
Small-time criminals
Walken’s Frank and Merchant’s lanky eccentric Greg are ensemble players here, amid a high-vis chain gang of small-time offenders.
This includes the excellent Rhianne Barreto’s academically-gifted British-Polish-Asian shoplifter Rani, Gamba Cole’s ‘bad boy’ Christian, Darren Boyd’s failing conservative businessman and family man John, Clare Perkins’ sharply right-on Myrna and Eleanor Tomlinson as upper-class online celeb Gabby.
There’s a lot going on here and none of it feels forced, from the straight-up character comedy flowing through Greg and Jessica Gunning’s officious team leader Diana, to the sharp political edge of John and Myrna’s interactions, to the thriller drama of Christian’s efforts to keep his sister out of trouble.
A second series is already being filmed, and on this evidence it’ll be deserved.
Roaming in the Wild
In Roaming in the Wild (BBC Scotland), the slow telly blend of gorgeous scenery and easy-going, naturalistic conversation makes Andrew O’Donnell and Mark Taylor’s series a kind of Scots equivalent of Bob Mortimer and Paul Whitehouse’s fishing adventures.
In this series, the pair traverses some of the nation’s great landscapes while chatting occasionally insightful nonsense to one another.
The series’ sixth and final episode aired on Thursday, and took a frankly surreal tone as the pair attempted to rebuild a wrecked pedalo and use it to sail Loch Ness.
Even the least hardened seafarer might have spotted they were onto a loser, and by the time they gave up and got a motorboat, the programme was half done.
Yet the gorgeous, drone-shot views of the Falls of Foyers or Castle Urquhart seemed almost incidental to this alternative travelogue, as the sense of enjoying the outdoors in company pushed to the fore.
A sense of wonder
“You definitely get to know a landscape a bit better when you’re walking every step or feeling every stroke of the paddle,” pondered O’Donnell at the end.
His contention is that travelling through the land under one’s own speed is a powerful antidote to losing a sense of wonder as you get older. Hear Hear.
Finally, The ‘80s: Music’s Greatest Decade? with Dylan Jones (BBC Two) was a bizarre curio.
Musical nostalgia trip
Essentially it was a classy and enjoyable nostalgic music clip show in which the former GQ editor seemingly attempted to say a couple of words about every single good song made in the 1980s.
Insightful talking heads like Nile Rodgers, Bobby Gillespie and Bananarama filled the gaps.
Yet one baffling central premise shot through everything – that “’80s music is often dismissed as a joke… but the ‘80s was a revolutionary time.
To anyone with a passing acquaintance with pop music in the last decade, the ‘80s’ enormous credibility and influence is already so obvious as to not need stating.
It would have grated less if he’d just told us he wanted to play us all his favourite songs.
