Radar: My Cultural Picks 06.10.25

Watching

Beck, BBC 4, BBC iPlayer

Beck is back. I love a good Nordic Noir and Beck is a shining example of this bleak genre. This time the lead character is Vilhelm, Martin Beck’s grandson. He’s quite the Byronic hero: mysterious, rebellious, arrogant, and principled yet misunderstood and alone in a world of bureaucracy and groupthink. These traits get him into trouble, of course they do, but he remains eminently likable and the writers and producers have struck a good balance in shaping his character for the screen. He’s played very convincingly by Valter Skarsgard - big, no nonsense, can handle himself in a fight, but harbours trauma from previous cases, with events at the end of the first episode doing nothing to help in that regard. The Invisible Man grapples fairly successfully  with the contemporary crisis of masculinity by focusing on the Andrew Tate-like figure of Victor Roos who is taken down by the alpha-male values he so fervently champions. The old Beck, Peter Haber, makes a few welcome cameos which adds depth and a few nods to the original series. This is smart, well written, finely tuned Nordic noir and well worth the 90 minutes per episode. 

Listening

Ivanov - Spotlight, Radio 3, BBC Sounds

Rory Kinnear plays Nicholas Ivanov (Chekhov’s first major stageplay) in this recent adaptation by BBC Radio 3. I should say that I’ve always been a fan of Rory Kinnear’s acting, ever since I saw him perform in The Last of the Haussmans at The National Theatre, alongside Julie Walters and the late Helen McRory. The play was a whirling spectacle of comedy from start to finish and I can’t remember laughing so much in a theatre as during that performance - it was clear the cast were having a blast. Now, when I watch Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (the Gene Wilder one - what else?) with my two boys, and see Rory Kinnear’s father, Roy Kinnear, playing the browbeaten father of Verruca Salt, it’s clear to see the acting lineage play out. There was also that very disturbing role Rory Kinnear played in Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror, where he assumes the position, so to speak, of a Prime Minister who has to have sexual intercourse with a pig on national television in order to release his kidnapped family – how do you even begin to come up with that storyline, Charlie Brooker? Anyway, you’ll be glad to know the depravity-o-meter has been turned right down in the Beeb’s production of one of Chekhov’s finest, maybe most underrated plays. Kinnear brings this complex character, carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders, to life in this play. I listened to it in spells as I found it hard to carve out 90 uninterrupted minutes, and would highly recommend it. Is it Chekhov’s best play? Probably not, and the ending is more bleak than tragic, indeed Ivanov’s depression and ‘exhaustion’ increases as the play unfolds. The tense dialogue between him and Sasha just before their marriage is played with all the tension it deserves from both actors, even if it is a grim ending. The depression of Invanov is convincingly conveyed by Kinnear whose ability for comedy, in this play, is matched by his ability to portray a character in the depths of despair. It’s the social commentary of the play, though, that lingers in the mind – Ivanov is an unlucky character, but also more than partly to blame for his undoing. What makes this play so timeless is how Chekhov balances the ambiguity of his Ivanov’s character on a knife edge throughout, leaving the audience us to wonder who is to blame for his suicide - society, Ivanov himself, or a but of both?