Last night’s schedule on Sky One was textbook. They don’t muck about with news and cookery programmes on Sky. Oh no. It’s two hours of The Simpsons to soften you up, then it’s a double bill of scary programming to keep you shuddering into the small hours (where they hope you’ll eventually stumble blindly towards the Sky Poker channel).
24 (Sky One, 9pm) and Josef Fritzel - Story of a Monster (Sky One, 10pm) were a less-than-jovial return to the kind of horror double-bill that forced teenagers out of cinemas in the 1970’s, blinking and shaking into the night, terrified by their own shadow. But which was most scary?
Imagine the sky filled with explosions. And bodies. And guns. You’re not even close to 24 : Series 7. I say the following as a fan, but after six full series of 24, and a writer’s strike delay, America’s most iconic export in terms of television drama returned in January with so much hype piled up behind it, any feint dabbing of the brakes would result in the whole structure crashing down around its ears. So the pace gets faster and faster year after year, and this series has not been a disappointment.
Explosions? They don’t cut it after 6 years. New President? We’ve had one every year since 2000 - it’s almost expected. You’ve got to up the ante. We’ve had so many returning characters, I almost expected Jack’s wife to turn up in the form of a ghost, floating behind Jack as he careers around corners, slamming vehicles left, right and centre, to remind him that his daughter doesn’t speak to him any more but when she can, she’ll email him. Tony’s already returned, which was fine, but he was joined by everyone from Chloe ‘invincible yet spiky’ O’Brien, via the now-white-haired Bill Buchanan to Chloe’s brilliantly bonkers husband Morris O’Brien, whose beard is threatening to swallow his face whole. Everyone’s onboard, that is, apart from Elisha Cuthbert, who one imagines is casting anxious glimpses at the programme from her trailer on whichever crud movie she is starring in next.
The 7th series of 24 has already fought a raft of controversy from commentators across the pond, who have accused it being neo-Con, which basically translates to it favouring the use of torture of held terrorists, i.e.the sort of thing that was demonstrated in Bush’s Guatanamo Bay, as opposed to the now-elected Obama’s stance, that being to burn Guatanamo to the ground as quickly as possible. 24’s producer, Joel Surnow has defended the early episodes of series seven, saying it was never in favour of torture, merely that it wanted to display the problems agents face when a lack of time and a resistant captive could be prescient to an impending disaster. Of course, this makes sense (to a degree) in the fictional world of 24, and Jack Bauer ably brings this scenario to the fore when after vital information. But it’s certainly interesting that, with Obama coming to power a third of the way through the series, this thinking is reversed - or at least the other side of the argument is portrayed - after Obama’s inauguration.
Anyway, politics is not the core of this series. It’s big bangs, gunfights, violent fighting, the whole kit and caboodle. The President has been slapped about like a marinated cod, Jack has undergone more physical pain than a Guatanamo resident himself, and the whole world’s about to end. Everything is an Nth more attention-grabbing than the series before, to such a degree that the next series will probably centre around a squiggly virus that inspires such levels of psychotic rage and destruction that the entire cast will be wiped out by episode three.
With barely time to make a cuppa and exhale, Josef Fritzel : Story Of A Monster (10pm) was Sky One’s attempt to beat Panorama to the punch of a documentary around the mad Austrian, following his lifetime incarceration in a psychiatric hospital last week (on my birthday - thanks Fritz). The problem with rushing old footage together, and cramming interviews from all and sundry into a documentary before anyone else has the chance, is that the whole programme had the feeling of something that isn’t quite ready yet. Fritzel was seen looking maniacal snarfing back a rack of beef or some such meat. In slow-motion. With darkly menacing music behind it. Come on, Sky One, doesn’t anyone look slightly ghastly slobbering on a meat joint in slo-mo? Sixth formers are less obvious in their HD-digicam-ready performances of Romeo ‘N’ Juliet these days. We get it, he was a monster.
Opinions on Fritzel were predictably varied, with him being described as, at turns, “a despot” and others, “a good natured man”. What struck me as unusual about the case as it was re-traced with all the delicacy of a 5-year boy making his first tree-rubbing, was quite how stark and obvious the tragedy that was about to unfold before us must have been to those closest to it.
Remember how you felt when you discovered that Ian Huntley had a record as long as your arm about preying on young girls in previous counties, following his conviction in the Holly and Jessica tragedy? That sense of shock and disgust at the glaringly awful disaster that was waiting to happen, and how it could have been prevented. This sense was magnified exponentially in Fritzel’s case. Here was a man who had previously kept his daughter inside to prevent her socialising with her friends to such a degree she fled her family home in an escape-attempt with her friend. Fritzel was had - incredibly - already been convicted of rape on a previous occasion too. His wife, who took him back after this ‘misdemeanour’ (he only served one year of an 18-month sentencefor the rape) was portrayed as a weak, servile cretin, who pandered to the maniacal Fritzel’s every insane whim. Make of that what you will (they said the same about Rose West in the early reports)
But the story’s sense of disbelief didn’t stop there. I had read the headlines and listened to the news bulletin leaders thinking that the ‘family home’ they spoke of was just that. Nothing could have been further from the truth. Over a HUNDRED lodgers lived in the same building over the 24 years poor Elisabeth Fritzel remained a prisoner of her deranged and disturbed father. One told of partying in the flat above her cellar with no knowledge of her existance - footage was grainily but chilling, the merriment above mayhem making for an abhorrent spectacle. Another lodger told of how his dog used to snarl at the floor of his apartment in the silent hours of early morning. How tragic that the dog’s insight was never followed up, only the victims could relay, and one was left with a sense of loss just by watching the story unfold.
Fritzel, it was revealed, released three babies from the underground cellar under the pretence that the supposed runaway daughter returned them (no doubt near-blind from never having seen natural light) by dropping them off on the family home’s doorstep. No-one but Fritzel was allowed into the cellar (”Don’t go in there, the handle might electrocute you.” ). This was taken as read by those around Fritzel, and the clues kept racking up. Fritzel was seen on a friend’s camera footgae on holiday buying a dress which didn’t fit his wife, but would have been a perfect fit for his ‘missing’ daughter. The friend’s mortified disbelief at the monster who stayed hidden under the cloak of friendship for so many years was galling. But there again was that sense whilst watching that the programme had been thrown together - other players in the sad history of Elisabeth’s life foresaw a degree of what happened, but it seemed all too familiar that those around him took Fritzel’s word as the law, and more importantly, the truth.
Shocking, and yet presented in a glossy, OK-Magazine run by stoners kind of way, the Fritzel documentary prompted me to exclaim “But how could that happen?!” an incredible number of times. Indeed, it would have been a record, if I hadn’t watched 24 first.
