The Cutprice Guignol

I say this with nothing but complete honesty in my heart: I love a good bit of utter shite on TV.

And I don’t mean the kind of shite you might be thinking of, no – not the prestige TV gone wrong, or reality TV gone right. No, I mean the very specific appeal of scripted dramas that are, without a shadow of a doubt, shite. As in, silly, ridiculous, self-serious and yet utterly pointless. The specific kind of camp that these shows unwittingly cultivate is truly one of my favourite things in the world, but it’s rare to find these days, what with us being in the “Golden Age of Television” in which “Important and Meaningful Narratives” take precedence over stuff that I like, for some reason.

Enter Red Eye: a deliciously stupid and insane crime drama thriller starring Richard Armitage (who, yes, I’ll say it, I still have a leftover crush from Robin Hood on) and Jing Lusi, created and written by Peter A Dowling. I heard such awful things about this show from the jump, I knew I had to give it a watch, and you know what? I wasn’t dissapointed.

The show follows a British doctor, Matthew (Armitage), as he is escorted back to China when a woman turns up dead after spending the night with him. Escorted by DC Hana Li (Lusi), Matthew has to contend with an assassin stalking him on a red eye flight, as British intelligence, led by Madeline (Lesley Sharp), try to figure out what the hell is going on.

And look, we’re already off to a prodigiously silly start with the locked room mystery taking place in the middle of an international flight. At seemingly random intervals, text flashes up on to the screen to announce how far we are from Beijing, as a mysterious (well, not actually, since you can guess within the first eight seconds who it is, but just play along, alright?) assassin starts Victor Tombs-ing through the air vents to pick off unfortunate passengers. I love a murder mystery at the best of times, but a murder mystery taking to the skies? With a ridiculous political scheme underpinning the whole thing? I’m practically foaming at the mouth.

I’m still trying to figure out, at this point, if Richard Armitage is a good actor or not; I find it hard to believe that a bad actor could have pulled off The Red Dragon in Hannibal as well as he did, but it feels like everything else I see him in, he’s visibly struggling to remember his lines while doing his best to act like a person. Most of this role, thankfully, comes down to him exchanging knowing glances with Hana (and, to be honest, I really loved Lusi in this role – she’s got a great presence to her, despite the dodgy script and surroundings) and pointedly pressing his hand against a wound in his torso every forty seconds just in case we forget where the deus ex machina is hiding (yes, really).

On the ground, Hana’s sister Jess (Jemma Moore, of the excellent Host) sets back the plight of journalism graduates everywhere by at least ten years by being the single most annoying person on the planet. But it’s where her story overlaps with Lesley Sharp’s that things really get interesting, because Sharp just sprints away with this series in a way that I could not get enough of. Sharp is a really great actor, but what she’s bringing here is a well-practiced level of Dick Swinging Bullshit that I literally would watch a twenty-episode spin-off about. She’s stalking around in a pantsuit! She’s got one foot planted on a sofa while she takes a phone call! She shouts “in English, please!” at the techheads when they say something that actually already makes pretty good sense to a layperson! It’s the distillation of all the most outrageously over-the-top Big Boss characters you’ve ever seen, delivered through the lens of Sharp’s charisma and inherent watchability, and I’m truly obsessed. When I say gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss, this is who I am thinking about, forever and always.

Red Eye is one of those shows that you simply have to switch off your critical thinking brain to fully enjoy. But, if you can, it’s honestly a hoot. I crave some utter shite every now and then, and Red Eye is, gloriously and completely, just that – silly, convoluted, over-acted brilliance that scratched my campy itch. It’s enough to hold me for now – though I am fully expecting to hear you recommendations in the comments!

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(header image via The Independent)