23/02/2014 The Review Show

This month, graphic nymphomaniac, pole dancers and hustlers.

Adventures in the mountains. The American dream in a doughnut shop. A

family affected by a disappearance. And watching the detectives. All

that and music here from Chvrches. Joining me are the writer and

broadcaster Natalie Haynes, writer Paul Morley and critic Lesley

Felpren. We are very grateful. We're beginning with the latest films from

two of the most intriguing directors working in cinema today. Arch

provocateur Lars Von Trier's Nymphomaniac - a typically arduous

four hours of explicit sex and violence. And in contrast, a comic

confection from another auteur which provided a colourful opener to the

Glasgow Film Festival this week. Why do you want to be a lobby boy. Who

wouldn't. At the Grand Budapest Hotel. The Grand Budapest Hotel is

Wes Anderson's typically eccentric take on the crime caper - a dazzling

cornucopia of visual treats, tall tales and top drawer talent Ralph

Fiennes plays Monsieur Gustave H, the charming chief concierge of a

legendary hotel, who takes under his wing a lobby boy, Zero, played by

newcomer Tony Revolori. The police are here. They asked for you. Tell

them I'll be right down. OK. Raffle Fiennes takes under his wing a lobby

boy, zero, played by Tony Revolori. I started primary school...

Education zero. Call the damn plumber. Not now. Six. A stellar

cast features Bill Murray, Adrien Brody, Jeff Goldblum and Tilda

Swinton as a series of typically screwball Anderson characters. How

may we serve you gentlemen? Ah inspector. By order of the police I

place you under arrest for murder. I knew there was something fishy. We

never got the cause of death. She's been murdered and you think I did

it! Lars Von Trier's Nymphomaniac is the

story of Joe, a woman whose life is increasingly dominated by an

appetite for sex. Charlotte Gainsbourg plays the older Joe, who

recounts the story of her life in a series of episodes to a stranger.

While her younger self is played by newcomer Stacy Martin. What do I do?

Smile. Make eye contact But what if it doesn't work? If you have to talk

remember to ask lots of work questions if you want more he has no

answer then it'll just happen on its own, you just take them to the

lavatory and you just have sex with them. What if its nasty? Then you

just think of a bag of chocolate sweeties It will come as no surprise

to aficionados of Von Trier's films that he follows Joe's descent into

addiction and degradation in a series of explicit scenes. The film

is likely to further cement his reputation as a filmmaker with few

limits. Let's start with Nymphomaniac. Does

Lars Von Trier, given all these films of various scenes of problems

for women, does this have anything new to say? Yes, I didn't find it

arduous. I found it entertaining. A lot of new things to say. He filters

whatever he say about women and being alive through so many

different episode and each has a different tone and approach. I find

it endlessly surprising and brilliant. It would be awful if

someone like Lars Von Trier with his imagination was wiped out of exist

tense. It is controversial. But that is the point. He is setting us up to

work out what what is going on. I thought it was brilliant. I thought

the first one mad a lot of -- had a lot of humour to it: Urma therman

steals it. She is terrible and ghastly and forces everyone to look

into the face of her traumatised children, while traumatising them

further. The second not so much for me. The fact that the structure is

dictated by Charlotte Gainsbourg that rating her life -- narrating

her life, so I never get the feeling I know who Joe is. I don't know what

she does for a living. How does she find out about the man who is

prepared to punish her? She has no friend. She has such a monotonous

voice. If you look at Lars Von Trier's films through Emily Watson

and the second Charlotte Gainsbourg and Nicole Kidman. It is always

women who are not entirely in control and unhappy. He has been

accused of being a misogynist. I don't think that is true. He likes

to put his lead actresses through suffering and test them. I am not

sure if that is out of identification. Do you think it is

more that Lars Von Trier, this is his own emotional journey? I think

maybe Joe is a stand in for him. What is fascinating, I think there

is moments that are brilliant, and bits where he knows nothing about

women. He is fascinated with them and he has an empathy for them. But

the psychology about Joe doesn't ring true to me. It is a kind of

energy he is dealing with. One thing I love, it is set in a weird limbo,

you never know, sometimes they're paying in pounds. Sometimes it was

1970s. It is some weird notion of everything. The film goes from

Ireland to Scotland to somewhere else. You're not sure if it is the

70s and you have then safe room where Joe is where Seligman. That

conversation is bonkers, because the scene of sex, the first place, goes,

ah that sequence. He can take it off. He can parallel park and it has

flew fishing. It has the idea it is about energy and what we are believe

about ourselves and how we liberate ourselves. It has his own criticism

and there is a lot of stuff about story telling. I'm not sure there is

a feeling of liberation with Joe. Not Joe, but the idea of making a

film in the current climate and make bg this kind of film takes courage.

If he is railing against the system, so what I feel. It is harder to rail

against the system. So the more you do it and do it in such a wonderful

way. I have seen the uncut version in Berlin. That is, well I don't

know, I don't know if I get like a Micky Mouse badge. I thought it was

more edgy. He takes that language of pornography. It is extended and that

exposure gives is more. -- gives it more. Do you think there needed to

be some kind of feeling of what triggered this. This idea, was not

trite to say it was the cold mother and the warm father. He has been

talking about making a porn film with real actors and he did that

with The Idiots. And there was controversy about which certificate

it got. So it is going over old territory. As with Wes Anderson, you

wouldn't mistake this work for anyone else. Is part of the thing

that you have to be there for four plus hours, part of the whole... Is

endurance what we are after? No I am never after endurance, I am after

brevity. I wish everyone agreed with me. But a I Las, not so much. There

is a homage to an earlier work and there is a fox and you think

anti-Christ. And the boy who does not go off the building. You have to

do more than four hours. But with Wes Anderson's film, Grand Budapest

Hotel, brevity. Xhom dithat -- comedy that is 90 minutes long. I

would like it send to anyone who makes a comedy more than that. It is

women'sical -- womens isical -- whimsical and Ralph Fiennes hasn't

been allowed to be funny. He is having a whale of a time and having

a hoot. What did you think, it was a mirror image of Nymphomaniac, it was

a backward story. Yes and all these narratives. I thought that was too

tricksy. I love Wes Anderson. They all hang together. This one will

find its slot in his work. Like Nymphomaniac and Lars Von Trier,

everyone queues up to work with him. William Dafoe was in both. It has

everybody. It found this really arduous. Psychedelic mastubation. It

was like someone from great British bake off doing it. It was so sweet

and self-conscious. Do you not think it had everything from grimes Grimms

fairy tales. It is representative of an infan tile world and I can see it

almost being animation. Which is like he would like to be. The

characters are like cartoon characters. 90 minutes, it felt like

four and a half hours. It has the emotional depth... He seems to be

getting slighter. The last film there was a resonance and am

nousness about the coming of -- ominousness and the war. They tried

hard to deal with grief. He has that. And the backdrop of the 30s

and the war is coming, like The Producers. Yes he doesn't flinch,

even gets a bloody nose. And compared with the Lars Von Trier

which is set after the 30s, women have jobs. I was delighted. Such a

surprise. And they seemed like actual people. So he manages... In

the Wes Anderson. There is not one person in it. There a baker, she is

not a hooker or a sex addict. Wes Anderson is cold. You say obviously

the Wes Anderson... The messy ps of Lars Von Trier. Lars Von Trier is

messy, but the relationships with the men are cold. All those fla Sid

penises? -- Flacid penises. The names go on and on. You need to

check who they are. Tilda Swinton under that make up. It is just

marzipan. It is a sort of homage to that Indian actor that ran a

convenience store and he is replaced. It is pop eating itself.

It could be, it is like marry Ann twa net. But in that I slept. But

she had a job. That was good. Sorry. Well, they can turn up and jam off

and get off on themselves and show off. But I did find it lacking. I

found it only containing actresses and actors and no human beings. What

about the music, that was phenomenal. There was music? Did

something say something is burning down. Did somebody have a gun. Lars

Von Trier is making more of a comment of the use of music. That is

a kind reading of that. The Grand Budapest Hotel is out on

the 7th of March, and both volumes of Lars Von Trier's Nymphomaniac are

in cinemas now - certificate 18, of course. Novels set in dysfunctional

families are nothing new but there's something of a spin on the genre in

the latest book from Karen Joy Fowler, the author of the bestseller

The Jane Austen Book Club. Fowler's new book, We Are All Completely

Beside Ourselves, examines the grief caused when a cherished member of a

close-knit family disappears, and the drastic consequences of a

scientific experiment gone wrong. I must warn you, spoiler alert coming

up. The novel is narrated by Rosemary

Cooke, a California college student, who has retreated into near silence

following catastrophic events which led to the implosion of her

close-knit family. For the first 76 pages of We Are All

Completely Beside Ourselves, the reader is carefully drawn into the

mystery of the disappearance of Rosemary's sister Fern, at the age

of six. We imagine the pain, the horror of losing a sister. On page

77, a twist in the tale - we discover that Fern is not a little

girl. She's a chimpanzee. Though I was only five when she disappeared

from my life, I do remember her. I remember her sharply. Her smell and

touch, scattered images of her face, her ears, her chin, her eyes. Her

arms, her feet, her fingers. But I don't remember her fully, not the

way Lowell does. The book is based on a real 1930s

experiment in America in which Gua, a baby chimpanzee, was raised

alongside a baby boy and treated like a human child. The chimp was

sent away and died shortly after, and her human companion killed

himself at the age of 43. A dark message about the nature of

scientific experimentation is masked by the book's playful structure and

warm narration. As well as exploring the subject of animal rights,

Rosemary discovers the tenuous nature of her voice, her memory and

the terrible guilt of losing a sibling. I would think better of

myself now if, like Lowell, I'd been angry about Fern's disappearance,

but it seemed too dangerous just then to be mad at our parents and I

was frightened instead. There was also a part of me relieved, and

powerfully, shamefully so, to be the one kept and not the one given away.

We have to invest a lot in Rosemary the narrator, because in the first

third of the book we have no idea what has happened to Fern and who

indeed Fern is. Did you like her voice? I found it a bit irksome and

mannered to begin with. And I thought, where is this going? I knew

nothing about it and was just and to read it as quickly as possible,

which was a disservice to the book. She describes her parents as having

this complicated relationship. And it was, where is it going? So it was

a genuine shock to me having read none of the reviews, and suddenly it

clicked into place and I've thought there was something very interesting

there about the nature of families and my point of reference for the

idea of a chimpanzee being raised, after a wonderful documentary called

Project Name. And this was tragically given away to a

veterinary medical science thing, so there were lots of parallels. I was

impressed by her research and the nature of what the... And of

course, the author, she grew up and her father was a behavioural

scientist does well. So it feels informed by that behaviour and

psychology. I thought an intriguing part of the book was at the

beginning that she had been a talkative child, really gracious,

and now she doesn't talk. -- loquacious. Yes. I can certainly see

how the book could great if you are on in the mood and in a hurry. But

it was incredibly adept. A proper thriller at times. And the thrill

is, what happened in our family? There is no crime, nobody got

murdered, nothing extraordinary or illegal happened. But there is this

huge hole in her memory, and yet at the same time she is incredibly warm

because she is so incredibly funny. There is a fantastic... Line after

line dropped in. At one point she describes somebody as every girl's

dream because she couldn't have a domestic vampire, a terrorist. So

she is incredibly good company, which made it an easy book. She is

extremely unreliable but she knows she is unreliable because there is

this big thing she doesn't remember and we are being told up front there

are gaps. Were you intrigued by the beginning of the story? And must

admit, the revelation on page 77 didn't knock me out because I guess

I wasn't paying that much attention. -- I must admit. For me,

the big revelation was on page something like 312, where the book

suddenly says, topics for reading book club discussion. I'd feel might

be in one now so I feel terribly like... Well, you mentioned the

creative writing thing and there is something about these books these

days is that we need a new category for these kinds of things. They are

not like books as I would know them. They are different sorts of things.

It feels like I need to be in a group of people discussing my life.

They are like therapy. And everything that happens in the

book, I'm thinking, I need to sit down in a circle of people and

discuss how it makes me feel. Highwood I have felt -- how would I

have felt if had grown up with a monkey as a brother? But fiction

places your imagination without it that. Maybe it is the punch line of

everything happening with literature, that after all that, all

it was was a grand theme of their appeal. And we will sit around and

discuss it in groups, how it makes you feel. Yes, even taking into

account I didn't know her father was a psychologist, you feel the

research wait a bit heavy, that has Oracle -- the historical precedent.

And what about the animal theme? There is a bit of the English

teacher quality - discuss, that sort of thing. And a topicality that

creates a sort of pig for book review to spin off. And something

picture editors can look at. I thought this removal of the

chimpanzee from the family, because she knew about the Kellogg case

where the man killed himself, so she imagined it being something so

devastating for the family they had never covered and she certainly as a

human being, life was not the way it might have been had she just had

human siblings. Absolutely. She is completely shaped permanently by

this childhood jihad. -- childhood and that she had. And Fern

disappeared when she was only five. It is obviously a theme of this

book, that when we experiment on animals, a position with which I'll

most entirely disagree with, it is not just the animals we might be

harming, it is ourselves. And that is absolutely the thesis which runs

through this book. It is a question of, what can you gain from putting a

chimpanzee in a family? And possibly the answer is not much, but then

what do you lose? It is the kind of thing that might have been covered

in a really good science fiction of the 1960s or 70s, and also taking it

to the next layer, that it wasn't just talking about our feelings but

that it was metaphorically amplified a bit. Turned into a book, not a

read. But the chimp lived with the family in the 30s so... But in terms

of the amplification of it, as you were saying, it seems calculated to

make us feel. There could have been more of a twist to it. One should

have had the twist on page 77? Yes, I feel there is not enough plot, not

enough there. Well, check it out for yourselves. The book is published

next month. From his highly stylised fashion shoots to his striking

street photography, Philip Lorca diCorcia is widely regarded by many

as one of the most innovative and influential photographers working

today. Now, in the first major British survey of his work, The

Hepworth Wakefield is showing over 100 photographs taken over the

course of his 35-year career. Philip-Lorca diCorcia first came to

the attention of the art world in 1993 when his photographs of

Hustlers went on show at New York's Museum of Modern Art. They feature

male prostitutes working in the shadow of the Hollywood hills. I

would ask them if I could take their photograph. That's all I wanted. I

didn't even really want them to be naked. And I would pay them the

lowest common do nominate of sex. -- denominator. I don't think you wind

up selling yourself on the street if you're happy about your life.

There was a backlash that I didn't try to show behind the scenes of

their lives or photograph them in an extensive way multiple times, and

that seemed to be, along with paying them, to be cheating, to some

people. For another series, Heads, the

pictures were taken in Times Square without the knowledge of the

subjects. I'm about 20 feet away, so they don't really notice me, and I

have to very precisely set everything up because it's a very

long lens, which means that they go through the frame in a fraction of a

second and I can't alter what I do. I'm not a control freak or anything.

Serendipity is a big part of photography and I wouldn't want to

eliminate it by getting so controlled that I wind up getting

exactly what I expected when I started.

DiCorcia's latest project, East Of Eden, began in 2008 in the wake of

America's involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan and the financial

crisis. As far as I could tell, everyone just thought they were

going to get more and more rich and everything was going to go well and

we were actually going to win these wars and that George Bush never told

a lie. Then it became clear very suddenly that this was not the case.

And things were going to get very bad, and in hindsight, yes, they

did, so I tried to use as a loose organising principle the expulsion

from the Garden of Eden, which is based on a loss of innocence.

Paul, did you find it easy to imbue the photographs with the kind of

meaning Philip wanted them to have? He was there when we were there and

he gave a speech, though I wish he wasn't. I'd like to think... And

obviously previously, yeah, absolutely. It is that ultimate sort

of analysis of what an image is and how important images are to us,

especially at the moment when we are surrounded by them. And the sense he

is still using these images are missed this jibber -ish and the

fragmenting of photography everywhere around us. -- in amongst

this jibber -ish. And can the past be made real because we can fix it,

can we take possession of the now because of a photograph? And

especially the photographs in the storybook world, each one is like a

poem. An incredible moment of creating a sense of reality and

peering into something. It is uncanny. So I would like to think,

yes, I can make sense of what he is doing, outside of his technique and

mastery. Just in terms of what he is trying to do in terms of

photography, it is a critical response of the world as it is.

There was this particular section called Hustlers. He bought a male

prostitutes for the day and took them where he wanted to photograph

them. Those images are quite extraordinary. For me, those images

were extraordinary because they were taken so long ago and you wonder

whether firstly, these guys are still alive. There is something

really difficult about it and his photography is not intended to

provoke an emotional response. It is the opposite of the book top

question. It is a statement and you are expected to have an intellectual

and possibly aesthetic response and not an emotional one, and then there

is this room full of men who look so fragile and so not long for this

world, and to add to the pathos, and it really is the only place this

happens, he gives a name and a place of origin and the amount in dollars

he paid them for the time, which is what they normally charged will

work. So it varies between 25 and $50. And it is such a small sum of

money and these men look so fragile, some of them very young, which is

devastating. Some of them on the verge of breaking point. 38 is old

in terms of a prostitute, I would guess, in LA. And it is an intense

and emotional room. It is an extraordinary piece of work. In this

exhibition of generally very surreal photography. We must say, of course,

that you very gallantly came on board, so you did not go to the

exhibition but you did look at the catalogue. I'd just want to take you

through the images of the pole dancers, which is his response to

the fallen men of what -- men and women of 9/11. Yes, I'm normally

find myself reaching for my gun with that but the images were

extraordinary. They made me think of some of the Bacon studies of nudes

and I've found them tender and beautiful. They resonate very well.

They resonate very well with the Hustlers. But what about the idea...

It was quite extraordinary this idea that he would go onto the streets of

New York and he would use either builders or whatever was to hand

that did not make it look like he was there, and he would use this

long lens and get these extraordinary. Nothing set up but

this clarity, and of course we know one person tried to sue him three

times not to use the images. This guy. He didn't like that. This is

like a portrait. It is amazing. Hi worked in the commercial world for a

while and he brings that sense of capturing some idea of beauty in a

moment. They're beautiful. They're posing, like they know and it looks

like they know and it is extraordinary. One girl looks like a

cat walk shot. He was saying how he chose them out of many, he said it

was interesting in a way it was obvious which one to choose. He is

after something in his mind's eye. That is happening a lot in art,

people taking photographs without clearing rights or the way a film

maker would if they're filming something. It is fair -- is it fair

use? When you're snapping a street scene, I think it is more

spontaneous, but his was the opposite. He set the whole thing up

and it was more like portrait painting. A lot of things have been

true of seemingly candid shot, famously the sailor kissing the girl

at the end of the war and people say how could somebody do that. But of

course you should. He is much more open about the fakeness of what

creating and that this is art and therefore that art fis is per

missible. He is not presenting the real world. But how he sees the

world. So those Times Square pictures are breath-taking, because

the faces pop out and they're extraordinary. I wonder if

particularly in the modern world, people make the connection with

photography. The gallery has been such champions of photography, the

Hepworth Wakefield and you can, it shows you can get an extraordinary

depth of emotional response to something like photography, as well

as you know painting. Yes the combination of the gallery itself,

which I spectacular and these photographs, which is a wonderful

connection. At first, you think, oh God, here we go again, America. But

the combination of the Hepworth and Barbara Hepworth and the photographs

takes that away and lifts it into how photography can be art in a

world where everyone takes photographs. Everyone is doing it.

But he is giving it reality. That is where the belong. Those photographs

by Philip-Lorca diCorcia until 1st June. Still too come Woody Harrelson

and the play Tracey Letts wrote. Now the first of two tracks from

Chvrches. The Glasgow band with We Sink.

# So tight # So easy # We are going to fall if you lead us nowhere # No

wasted time. Please say we listen. # Nobody is

going to listen until you die # Let me stop for a second # Hand high

# No time # Watching full flight. # Tell you to cut out if you make me #

how you decide. # More from Chvrches later and there

is an interview with the band online. Playwright and actor Tracy

Letts is quite the man of the moment- he's currently appearing as

the shady senator Andrew Lockhart in Homeland, and both Meryl Streep and

Julia Roberts are up for Oscars for their roles in John Wells' big

screen adaptation of his blackly You don't believe me.

The UK premier of the play he wrote next is in London. Hm? That I wrote

the Great American Novel. You don't believe me. FORCEDGREEN No, I

believe you. You don't sound like you believe me. Why wouldn't I

believe you? I don't know why you wouldn't believe me. Maybe you're a

racist. Are you a racist? No. I mean, I don't think so. I mean, I

hope not. I mean, probably not, but...you know I hired you, didn't

I? Scoot over, Lincoln, make room on the penny. It starts off ostensibly

as an odd couple relationship we've got a 59-year-old Polish American

guy and 21-year-old African American guy and he hires him to help him in

his donut shop, but as the story... Can you name any other black poets?

In fact I can. Go. Is this a test? Yeah this is a test. This is your

racist test. I have to take a racist test, did you have to take a racist

test. I can't be a racist. It feels like it still has the Tracey Letts

edge to it. What I love is he puts so much attention to narrative. As a

play it is a real page Turner and gentler and has a toughness to it.

Maya Angelou. That is a good one. You answered the foreblack poets in

your cross word puzzle. It feels like the play is about how

redemption can be found through people you meet in your life who may

not be, they may seem to be different, but ultimately the

relationships go deeper than that and deeper than surface level

differences and how an older guy can have a friendship with a younger man

and the two of them can change each other's lives. If I pass the test,

will you let me read your book. Where were we. Alice Walker. What?

It is a simple tale. Is there enough depth in it? I think as often for

me, the running time could have been cut and nothing would have been

lost. It is two hours 40 with about interval. -- with an interval. It

could have been shorter. The writing is good, but not great. It is

redeemed by a terrific bit of acting. Jonathan Livingston, it is a

luminous performance. He lights up the stage. Everybody else kind of

brightens in his light. It is a beautiful performance that he gives.

Both as the two sides of the character. And he and Mitchell

Mullen play so well off each other. It is better than a regular odd

couple. You get a sense of their journey and all the people around

them are just ornaments. Yes they make it feel a lot like a

sentimental tribute to a gentle 1970s American sit come. A lot of

the things it sets up in terms of elements of American dream and

broken marriages, it feels like it is going to be the great American

play. But it is not unentertaining. It is lovely to watch. But it is

quite insubstantial. It hints at everything and then never goes

there. It is like he was exhausted by the one before and here is a few

things he had in mind. The thing is about itself, with the book the kid

is writing about the great American novel. This suggests it will be the

great American play, but it is like a minor 70s sitcom. You didn't see

it, because we drafted it in late. But you read the script. This idea

of the multinational taking over. But it is just another immigrant

group, the idea that the Russian wants to take over. I thought the

Russian character on the page... You should have seen it live. It was

worse. It could be interested. Chicago is an interesting setting.

It is as much as New York a city of great waves of immigrations and

Polls and blacks -- Poles and blacks from the south and eastern

Europeans. I liked the stuff about the digs at Starbucks moving in. It

could be, but it was an easy dig. That stuff is happening it. In terms

of what I did think. In terms of idea of community that in this kind

of, the fast-moving world you could have the community which allows the

old woman to come into the shop and get free stuff. That was touching.

And quite true f you go into even a Starbucks in small town America,

they do know the names of each person. They see people and they

come in and they know their names. You think Starbucks at home doesn't

do this. People keep coming in and I heard the audience applauding the

cameo. Having read the play, I am not sure I would want to see it. The

performances are extraordinary. Mitchell Mullen when he does his

monologues about a failed 60s radical. And he was a refuse nick

and went to Canada to escape the draft and again you feel that

informed the re his life and his feeling about his own position and

that. That idea of putting the 60s and the 70s and the informs from

that and that is a difficult language and you put that with a

younger person with their own desires and work out how they go

together. You could have done that with the two of them. But he writes

this material. Because there is lots of actors. He likes a big a cast and

it is such a small stage and there are times you feel it is a heavily

dressed stage. And I think there are times when you somebody picks up a

coffee stirrer and you think, where are they going to put that. It was

nippy fighting and that is worth the price of ticket. That is how crossby

Styles and Nash would fight. Superior doughnuts is at the

Southwark Playhouse in London until the 8th of March. Another man of the

moment is Matthew McConaughey, who's achieved a spectacular reinvention

in recent years, from romcom hunk to Hollywood heavyweight. He recently

played the title role in Killer Joe, also written by the ubiquitous

Tracey Letts, and now has an Oscar nomination for his role as the AIDS

activist Ron Woodroof in Dallas Buyers Club. In the new series True

Detective, he appears alongside his old pal Woody Harrelson. The pair

play a duo of mismatched cops on the hunt for a killer.

Have you seen anything like this before? No, sir. Eight years CID.

Them symbols - they're Satanic. They had a 20/20 on it a few years back.

ID? No, sir. The series follows a duo of

detectives as they as they investigate the ritualistic murder

of a prostitute in 1995. It then flashes forwards 17 years. A copycat

killing has taken place and the two detectives undergo a series of

interviews about the original crime. So, do you want to call the whole

case through or just the end? No, the whole story from your end, if

you don't mind. Like he said, the files got ruined. Hurricane Rita.

What he didn't say was this was about something else. Something new,

the one on Lake Charles or maybe... This series is less a -- a police

procedural and more a study of character. The morose loner Rustin

Cohle, played by McConaughey, and the straight-talking Martin Hart,

played by Harrelson, who refuses to engage with Cohle's existential and

at times bleak monologues. I got a bad taste in my mouth out here.

Aluminium, ash, like you can smell the psychosphere. I got an idea.

Let's make the car a place of silent reflection from now on. OK?

True Detective has been HBO's most successful series debut since Martin

Scorsese's Boardwalk Empire in 2010. But in spite of its audacious

structure and bankable cast, does it breathe enough new life into a

familiar narrative of detectives struggling with inner demons?

You really don't want to do that. You pick my brain, you got to get me

a cheeseburger and a Coke, don't you? Why is this so important to you

all of a seven? Cos it's Thursday and past noon. Thursdays is one of

my days off. On my off days I start drinking at noon. You don't get to

interrupt that. Yet again, for the third time

tonight, this is a looking backwards structure, where, actually, the very

claustrophobic conversation with the two former cops by other cops in

more or less present day is as important as the action. Sticky

yellow absolutely, so it is moving back and forward and about

unreliable narrators and who is telling the truth and who is

possibly slightly fudging it. We as the audience get to see what that

tree happening in the scene and then you get to hear Woody Harrelson

trying to hide the fact he was cheating on his wife. It could have

fallen will you flat and I think it struggled in the first episode to

regroup me. -- really flat. But then I was very engaged and very seduced

by the way it was shot. A real sense of cinematography. And I like this

movement they are doing with television thrillers, that this is

going to be a chapter by the same director, who is really interesting

and did a wonderful adaptation of Jane Eyre, and that has a lot of

voice. It has been talked about in the same vein as Scandinavian war.

But it almost brings Twin Peaks to mind. With very good reason. It has

that slightly strange, dreamlike quality because we're watching these

two men flip between 15 years, maybe a bit longer, and so facial hair

appears and disappears, facial wits, more impressively, appears and

disappears! -- facial width. So it does appear dreamlike at times. That

is not necessarily a problem. What is the problem is, here we are,

looking back at things. Quite a lot of voice-over or somebody saying,

yes, I once did that, this, the other. And if you were playing this

for which you would have dramatised that. It is almost going there in a

retro way, having these two detectives look at the murder of

this woman. It is almost retro. But almost incidental. Yes, the

Louisiana serial killer thing is neither here nor there. It is

interesting seeing young writers being influenced Twin Peaks. Maybe

at one time they would have gone into books or reading, fiction, but

now they have gone into television and that is fascinating. A different

world. For me, this is cops and cars catching serial killers and eye

could watch the two of them talk about that. Why could just watch

Matthew McConaughey smoke. That was so scary! I don't want to watch Brad

Pitt or Leonardo DiCaprio smoke! And there is a scene where the

revivalist church tent is there and Matthew McConaughey is dissing

everybody in there and it is very, very funny. And also the great

setup, which, technically, is banal, but it is wonderful, the flashback,

because we want to work out how both of them... Woody became Woody, as he

always does, and Matthew became Matthew, and you want to know, how

the hell did that happen? And I must mention the music. The selection of

music lifts it up into art. Absolutely. It is one of the great

moments of music film, acting moments, that 13th floor elevator.

And doing some great stuff. He really elevated the song selection.

So it becomes a really integral part in the lockstep between his work

with the cinematography and this use of sound as well. A beautiful use.

Here is a new use for this kind of music. Final is dead, etc. We would

talking earlier about Louisiana and the palate is fantastic as well. --

we were talking. Very subtle shots. It resonated for me with the work of

the photographer we have seen as well. That abandoned... He has a

wonderful moment when he talks about the town as a memory that is fading.

These strip moles and same old stores. But there is something

distinctive about it. -- strip malls. This milky kind of light.

Somebody not decaying is Matthew McConaughey. Who would have

thought?! Anybody who thought -- saw him in Magic Mike will know. You are

waiting for him to stop being so handsome! He was trapped in that

body and it was a bit of a curse. Now that he is not in that juvenile

role, you can do something more interesting. And going back to Lars

Von Trier, that is not reading group stuff either. We cannot go back

without looking at the women. There are simply not any woman -- women in

decent positions. I think the Michelle character, who plays Woody

Harrelson's wife, has a strong presence, a great actress. I am

disturbed by people who don't see women in any jobs at all except

prostitute! I am vaguely worried! Mothers, sisters. I think there

might be something more subtle going on. Well, we will have to see

because we have only seen three episodes. It runs on Saturday nights

for the next seven weeks on Sky Atlantic. You can catch the show

again on iPlayer. Thank you to all my guests, Leslie, Natalie and Paul.

Martha will be back next time with highlights from Spring's cultural

calendar, but to play us out, a another track from Chvrches. This is

Recover. # Cut out a hole,

# Hiding from you, # Skin is so cold,

# Everyone, everyone knows it's me. # And if I recover will you be my

partner? # Would chew the over? -- would you

be over? # Give me one more chance, I'll give

you one more chance To say we can change our old ways And you take

what you need And you know you don't need me Blow by blow Honest in every

way I know You appear To face a decision I know you fear And if I

recover Will you be my comfort Or it can be over Or we can just leave it

here So pick any number Choose any color I've got the answer Open the

envelope I'll give you one more chance To say we can change or part

ways And you take what you need And you don't need me I'll give you one

more chance To say we can change our old ways And you take what you need

And you know you don't need me And you know you don't need me And if I

recover Will you be my comfort Or it can be over Or we can just leave it

here So pick any number Choose any color I've got the answer Open the

envelope I'll give you one more chance To say we can change or part

ways And you take what you need And you don't need me I'll give you one

more chance To say we can change our old ways And you take what you need

And you know you don't need me me. # And you know you don't need me.

# And if I recover, will you be my comfort # Or it can be over # Or we

can just leave it here # So pick any number # Choose any colour # I have

got the answer # Open the envelope # I'll give you one more chance # To

say we can change or part ways # And you can take what you need # And you

don't need me # I'll give you one more chance # To say we can change

our old ways # And you take what you need # And you know you don't need

me.