TABOO, BBC1, 9.15pm
LOOK at the TV schedules and tell me what else you’ll be watching on Saturday night? Unless you enjoy repeats, or perhaps listening to people sing (in this case people who have just strolled in off the street – Let It Shine, BBC1 and The Voice, STV) then there’s little option other than Taboo.
Thankfully, it has enough drama, intrigue and darkness going on to compensate for the very tepid TV elsewhere tonight.
As always happens in dramas when a recently deceased person’s will is read, there has to be a stormy dispute.
Relatives are guaranteed to pop up and demand a piece of the action. In this case, it’s not a relative but Lorna, the spirited actress who says she was Delaney’s father’s widow – and she wants half of the house.
As if he doesn’t have enough on his plate!
But someone may be offering the hand of friendship to Delaney, and he surely needs it in a black city of greed, dirt and plotting.
TALKING PICTURES, BBC2, 1pm
THIS edition of the film show offers a profile of Debbie Reynolds, who died last month.
Reynolds deserves posthumous attention because, to younger generations, she’s remembered simply as Carrie Fisher’s mum, or the woman who lost her husband to Elizabeth Taylor, or the girl from Singin’ In Rain.
But she was an actress who was at the heart of Hollywood during its golden era and should be more widely appreciated. Narrated by Sylvia Sims, the programme offers archive clips of Reynolds discussing her favourite film roles but it also touches upon the public collapse of her marriage when Eddie Fisher left her for Liz Taylor.
Although it was hurtful and humiliating at the time, you could argue that the scandal helped Reynolds' career.
It created a public image of her as a wholesome American wife in contrast to the vampish and predatory Liz.
And Hollywood in that more innocent age always had room for actresses of that type, such as Reynolds and Doris Day.
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