Turks & Caicos BBC 2 10pm written and directed by David Hare

I’ve an admission to make. I thought I’d a fair idea what a Turk was, but I looked up Caicos in the dictionary. Only it wasn’t there. Somebody’s being fiddling with the Oxford English Dictionary or I’m a bit daft. If we take away all the plausible explanations and are left with only the daft ones then it was probably me. In case we didn’t get it, where not up to speed, a black cop told Johnny Worricker (Bill Nighy) what it was all about. Turks and Caicos is one of those friendly offshore havens the rich plug into and zing their money to avoid paying tax. The currency is dollars, but it’s a British protectorate. Somebody else ranted (it doesn’t really matter who) if all the rich people in the world paid their share of taxes everybody could have a couple of cans of Tennents and there would be enough left over for a kebab. I also had to travel back in time and look at my review of Page Eight. Well, the latter was a bit of skulduggery with the Israelis. It had Rachel Weitz as the sister of the brother that didn’t do it. I can’t remember what, but the Prime Minister was implicated. He’s also implicated here. There’s no such thing as ‘dirty money’ Christopher Walken drawls at Bill Nighy. He makes a reference to TS Elliot and says it’s an oxymoron. An oxymoron is Bill Nighy or Christopher Walken playing anyone but themselves. In the first scene, for example, Nighy is shown sunbathing, but with all his clothes on, shaded by a tropical tree. How do we know he’s sunbathing? Because he’s wearing shades.  He’s irresistible. First we’d Rachel Weisz flinging herself at him. Now here he’s got Winona Ryder and Helena Bonham Carter ditching the bad guys with loads of Wonga and making puppy eyes at good old Johnny Worricker. He did at one point encourage Winona to eat something, but she stubbed a fag out in her food. Everyone knows Winona is a recovering anorexic. It all got a bit muddled at this point. The gangsters were property developers and the property developers build prisons and tortured people for the government who were really gangsters and the biggest gangster of them all was Tony Blair or Alec Beesley played by Ralph Fiennes. Oxymoron. No I’m not.  These are all big name actors, big game hunters. I bet it’s a thriller.  In the same way as any programme about drug misuse among the megastars or/and homosexuality Elton John needs to be interviewed, any drama series set in 1970s, 1980s…2010 England, needs to star Bill Nighy. I do miss Rachel Weisz. I hope she’s in the next one.  

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b03yrjvc/Turks_and_Caicos/