Catch up TV: The Missing, Babylon and The Fall

There is, you may have noticed, a lot of James Nesbitt going on. In The Missing (BBC iPlayer) he continues to look like a man whose Polyveldts are stuffed with hot rocks. Sometimes he seems innocent, sometimes guilty, sometimes both qualities co-exist, as his character tries to get to the truth of the disappearance of his young son. If, in fact, that is what he’s doing.

This week the Rubik’s cube twisted, bringing his vengeful side to the fore, which raised the question: why is he so angry? Does he, after all, have something to hide? The Missing established early on that he was motivated by guilt, but the cause of that guilt remains tantalisingly open as he marauds glumly around France.

The Nesbitt of Babylon (4oD) is different. It’s a strange hybrid of a show, being an actual police drama in which the cops are ridiculed with the kind of humour that wouldn’t be amiss in Airplane. But Nesbitt, as Metropolitan Police Commissioner Richard Miller, doesn’t do a Leslie Nielsen. He unleashes his 1,000-yard stare and plays his hand with unabashed aggression. Without Nesbitt the uncertainty of tone that keeps Babylon on the edge of farce would overwhelm it. Nesbitt’s role is to glower and grimace and to issue volcanic eruptions of poetic swearing. Forget Doctor Who, Nesbitt’s Miller is the new Malcolm Tucker.

Observe his dismissal of a proposal for a sponsored police news network, The Metwork: “This kettling was brought to you by Morphy Richards.” Or the way he orders the deletion of some potentially embarrassing emails. “I don’t want it to happen. I just want it to have happened.” Obviously nothing like that would ever occur in the Met, but the scene in which a copper was required to eat 100 chicken nuggets on his last day had the ring of truth.

Meanwhile, The Fall (BBC iPlayer) keeps on falling. You were probably wondering why it was called The Fall and have been waiting patiently for the appearance of ranting Mancunian punk Mark E Smith. But no. This week (small spoiler with no great spoiling potential), Paul, the beautiful grief-counselling supermodel psychopath, started quoting Albert Camus, while wearing only black underpants. The target of his philosophical outburst — a teenage girl who was tied to the bed in anticipation of the surrender of her virginity, if not her life — was unimpressed. Bit of a retro reference, Camus. And a bit showy for a serial killer — but then telly serial killers are always undone by their absurd vanity.

Still, by any reckoning, Paul (Jamie Dornan) is losing the plot. It’s a flaw he shares with the show. So much of the success of the first series was to do with the choreographed similarities between the hunted and the hunter, Stella (Gillian Anderson). Now Paul is becoming erratic in predictable ways. Still, it’s worth it for Anderson, who is treated as a fetish object throughout. She showers, she swims, she displays her porcelain cleavage. Perhaps this makes voyeurs of us, the perverted viewers, though such an analysis seems too grand. But there is something extraordinary about Anderson’s performance. A sacrilegious thought occurs in the mortuary as she’s discussing butchery with (the gorgeous but in this case understated) Archie Panjabi. Look at Anderson’s hair. It’s a star-lit helmet of female power. Listen to the voice: artificially lowered, with the emotions tethered. Gillian Anderson is, quite clearly, channelling Margaret Thatcher.

So there you have it, fight fans: the Irony Lady versus Camus in a grapple to the death. Three falls or a submission. The masked existentialist doesn’t stand a chance.

Serial box

Finally, Homeland (4oD) has reached the place where it’s impossible to write about without spoilers. But let’s try. Episode six was, according to the Washington Post, the show’s best episode in years. Perhaps, but you’d have to drink a whole lot of Lucozade to believe Carrie would get away with behaving the way she does.

Perhaps America’s spooks do go in for a bit of the old Mata Hari, and perhaps a Muslim boy who survived a drone strike would be in such a state of grief and confusion that he’d fall for the attentions of a weird American girl.

Perhaps. But that doesn’t excuse the marginal role played by Saul (Mandy Patinkin), who would be the best thing in the show if the writers could get him out of the terrorists’ boot.