TV preview, The Windsors (Channel 4, Wednesday 10pm): now with added Theresa May

Plus George Best: All by Himself (BBC2, Sunday 9pm), Broken (BBC1, Tuesday 9pm), Coconut (BBC3, Wednesday), Count Arthur Strong (BBC1, Friday 7pm), Wimbledon (BBC1, BBC2 Monday from 11.30am)

Sean O'Grady
Thursday 29 June 2017 11:51 BST
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Harry Enfield, Haydn Gwynne and the cast return in Channel 4’s ‘The Windsors’
Harry Enfield, Haydn Gwynne and the cast return in Channel 4’s ‘The Windsors’

I for one am excited at the return of Channel 4’s The Windsors – now with added Theresa May. The Prime Minister is portrayed, not for the first time, as a cold, scheming plotter, which seems about right, if you bear in mind that some cold scheming plotters aren’t always that good at cold scheming and plotting, as we’ve discovered.

Gillian Bevan it is who slips into the kitten heels this time, and she joins quite an array of May impersonators of one kind or another – Jan Ravens, Tracey Ullman and Jacqueline King (as in the recent rollicking BBC docudrama Theresa vs Boris).

All have managed to capture her fine e-nun-ci-ation of e-ver-y sy-ll-a-ble she speaks, and her essential coldness/shyness/aloofness but I’m not sure anyone’s yet caught her sheer gangly awkwardness, the physical expression of a personality not at ease. Anyway, Harry Enfield and Haydn Gwynne return with the heir homely portrayals of the Prince of Wales and his bird, Vicky Pepperdine as an uncanny Princess Royal, and the ever brilliant Hugh Skinner as the Duke of Cambridge, rendered with all the idiot toffiness he deserves. If Prince Harry is right and none of them really want to be members of The Firm, we could quite smoothly replace them with this lot.

There was a glorious old joke about George Best that went something like this. George takes his girlfriend, a Miss World, off to the races (obviously) and they win £5,000 on the horses – more money in George’s heyday of the 1970s than today. They’re up in his suite at the Ritz counting out the cash with some vintage champagne when they call up room service and ask for some more fizz. The porter duly turns up with his trolley and ice bucket and hands George and his babe the drink. Then, unable to control his Calvinist righteousness he tut tuts at Britain’s great sportsman and asks: “Where did it all go wrong George?”

Of course it did go wrong, with Best’s all too well publicised alcoholism, that contributed to his death in 2005, aged 59. Today perhaps his reputation is fading, but George Best: All by Himself reminds us just why he was such a sensation in his day, and one of the precursors of the cult of the footballer that we know today. Sadly the demons – including the excesses of the tabloid press – that attacked and eventually consumed Best are still going about the malign handiwork on today’s generation of sports stars.

Count Arthur Strong is back in action 

Broken, brilliant but flawed in its central premise, sees its finale this week, and you should be prepared for more challenging writing from Jimmy McGovern and outstanding performances from Sean Bean as Father Michael and Anna Friel as Christina Fitzsimmons. My problem is only that I find it hard to believe that any Roman Catholic priests could conceivably wind up where this one is, that’s all.

A much bigger disappointment may be Coconut, another mockumentary from the BBC3 comedy machine. After People Just Do Nothing and This Country they set themselves a pretty high standard and sooner or later there was going to be a miss. Coconut, as the name suggests, is centred on a ridiculous figure named Ahmed Armstrong, Pak Nation TV's “award winning reporter and hard Brexiter”. He's a cross between David Brent, Chabuddy G and Citizen Khan, but it doesn’t really work. Well not yet anyway, though it has the odd sharp line and Nina Wadia, so it has some promise and might be worth persevering with; fine comedies often are.

Talking of which, I’ve been watching the current series of Count Arthur Strong hoping and praying, as a devoted fan, that the genius of the Count on stage and radio will at last be replicated on TV. Well, my prayers have been answered, if only because a few skits (such as a routine based on the words “Benedict Cumberbatch”) are borrowed from the live routine, and, maybe, because the Rory Kinnear character, plus his love interest, isn’t in this one. And there are biscuits. Anyway this one made me laugh, for a change.

Last, I’m not even going to pretend that I’m looking forward to Wimbledon, that annual clichéd boreathon. It’s there, unavoidably, for viewers whether they like it or not.

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