Mint (BBC1)
A shovelful of artiness never did Shakespeare any harm. The question is, how much stylised whimsy and airy-fairyness can we tolerate in a gangland drama?
Mint is the age-old romance of Romeo and Juliet, transported to the Glasgow housing estates. Shannon (Emma Laird), the spoilt daughter of a crime boss, falls in love at first sight with a shy lad, Arran (Loyle Carner) — only to find out he’s the brother of an upstart gangster intent on starting a turf war.
Why the first hour was divided into two episodes is anybody’s guess, though this is a device the Beeb is using more frequently. It did allow writer and director Charlotte Regan to concentrate on Shannon’s viewpoint in the opening half and Arran’s in the second.
More intrusive was the heavy-handed emphasis on magical fantasy and metaphor. Every time Shannon looked at Arran, her eyes filled with sparkles. And whenever we saw the boy from her perspective, he was surrounded by a blaze of sparks that burst like champagne bubbles.
Such heavily artificial storytelling did make for some bizarre clashes in style. In parts, this was straightforward gang war violence. A minion got stabbed in the leg and staggered into the boss’s luxury pad, spurting blood over the snooker table.
But then, as our heroine lay in bed fantasising about her new fella, her mind lit up with lightning flashes and electric explosions.
‘You’re smitten,’ announced her mum, Cat (Laura Fraser). We’d already worked that out, thanks.
At least we now knew why, when we first met Shannon, she was floating blissfully into the air with her arms outstretched. I thought for a moment I’d switched to ITV by accident and was watching another of those insurance adverts, the ones where satisfied customers fill up with helium and bob up against the ceiling.
Cat seems to live her whole life like that. She fell head-over-heels at 16 for Dylan (Sam Riley), a mad-eyed thug with a business brain, like both Kray twins crammed into one suit.
Dylan’s idea of a good party is to get his guests coked up before staging a few prize fights, with the first bout a battle between a father and son.
His mother, Ollie (Lindsay Duncan), is the crime world queen, though these days she puts more effort into making sure she’s slept with all the hired muscle.
In a rewrite of the Romeo And Juliet balcony scene, Ollie gazed over a balustrade at the hoodlums below, ranking them in order of sexiness. In another retelling of the same scene, Shannon hung out of a window, yelling at a suitor below.
As if that weren’t stagey enough, when Shannon and Arran went for an afternoon drive, day turned instantly to nighttime, with the lovers under a streetlight.
Now we were in the Dire Straits version of R&J . . . ‘She’s singing, Hey la, my boyfriend’s back!’
