The Execution of Gary Glitter

Channel 4

Although capital punishment was not finally abolished in this country until 1969, five years after the last hanging, the debate over it was still current during the Seventies. I remember one newspaper columnist of the era asking us to imagine the bleakness of execution day: the chill in the air, the drizzle from the grey winter sky, the crisp packet tossed poignantly in the wind ... But, of course, it could just as easily happen on a lovely spring day.

And this is much more how the writer- director Rob Coldstream imagined The Execution of Gary Glitter. His fantasy docudrama was set in an alternative Britain which, after a public outcry over the Soham infanticides, had brought back hanging for murders and the rapes of children under 12. Extrapolating wildly from a contribution by the talking head Vic Gatrell, author of The Hanging Tree: Execution and the English People 1770-1868, the programme imagined a carnival atmosphere outside Pentonville prison, with supporters and protesters clashing and T-shirts for sale. At the top of the charts (to Glitter’s fury), the glam rocker’s greatest hits had been supplanted by a remix of the pitiful “I’m not a monster” speech he gave from the dock. At every turn, Coldstream, in other words, imagined a crueller and more vicious Britain than we actually have.

It is still cruel and vicious enough, however, if Channel 4, after the bafflement that greeted Death of a President, its wish- fulfilment drama about the assassination of George W. Bush, can think it either entertaining or informative to dramatise the hanging of a living person. So much of the programme was so improbable, it was tempting not to get worked up about it. The mix of real experts such as Ann Widdecombe and Gary Bushell (I hope they were handsomely rewarded) with actors playing the death-row chaplain, the hangman, the “mother of a victim” and others, was jarring. The legal niceties were finessed over: the European Court of Human Rights is, apparently, UKIP should note, just “a piece of paper”. Glitter’s defence solicitor was also his barrister and looked about as sincere as Piers Morgan.

And yet we did care because at the centre of the carnival was a brilliant, Bafta-worthy performance by Hilton McRae as Glitter. With a pigtail shooting off the back of his bald head and a superior sort of smile playing about his lips, McRae caught the bankruptcy of a man who still considered himself the star of his own show. His final breakdown in jail was hideous to watch, although not as hideous as the execution itself. From the bagging of his still protesting head to the sudden opening of the trap door beneath, it left me physically nauseated.

If The Execution of Gary Glitter was a satire on public hysteria over paedophilia, Chris Morris’s Brass Eye special did it better eight years ago. If it was supposed to be a discussion of the morality of the death penalty, a revival of the old Granada Hypotheticals format might have been the way to go. If it was intended as anti-capital punishment propaganda, the ends did not justify the degrading means. Shame on Four.

Collision

ITV1

“It’s a mess,” said DI John Tolin, played by the always engaging Douglas Henshall, at the end of the first episode of Collision, the drama that, à la Criminal Justice, ITV1 is bullying us into watching the channel at 9pm every night this week. But Collision, under the creator Anthony Horowitz and his co-writer Michael A. Walker, is anything but a mess. A pile-up on the A12 involving eight vehicles including a police car has resulted in two fatalities and six others injured. Not only does that leave Tolin with eight lines of inquiry, but the writers with eight pre-crash plotlines to convey. The efficiency with which they, sometimes teasingly, began to do so was commendable.

The collision of narratives at the point of an accident is not new, of course. The slightly crass Oscar-winner Crash did it. Nor, even in Essex, would one reckon on a single accident involving quite so many crims: a dodgy white-van man, a secretary indulging in a little industrial espionage, a quiet piano teacher who may be a paedophile, an ironmonger apparently taking his valetudinarian mother-in-law to her death? But they are well-played and we want to know more about them all. This serial lacks Criminal Justice’s moral gravity – but, actually, who cares?

Miranda

BBC Two

On her new sitcom Miranda, Miranda Hart has set herself the difficult job of making an irritating and socially awkward character watchable. She worked hard last night by sub-vocalising her thoughts, talking to camera, showing us fantasy sequences and doing more pratfalls than Lucille Ball. She’s funny.

Yet a series based on a young woman’s ugliness worries me and so does one predicated on the idea that she must marry. I suppose it is progress that the tall, goofy Hart gets to star at all. In the good old, bad old days, she would be writing for her attractive co-star Sally Phillips. But she, oddly, is currently a radio star.

andrew.billen@thetimes.co.uk

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