What secrets do our leaders hold within and about their minds? It is well documented that US president Ronald Reagan and British prime ministers Maggie Thatcher and Harold Wilson developed dementia in their later years, but did it affect them while they were in power?
That is the premise of Boss, a new miniseries starring Kelsey Grammer in a Golden Globe-winning performance as a Chicago mayor with a degenerative neurological disorder. He keeps his condition a secret from everyone bar his doctor, including his wife (Danish actress Connie Nielsen).
With 78 on Metacritic, and a pilot directed by none other than Gus Vant Sant, its portrayal of life at the top has won many fans. “When you have a story as thoroughly involving as this one, evoking both King Lear and Citizen Kane, and when the performances are this good, Boss almost directs itself,” applauds the San Francisco Chronicle.
The affliction of the central character in The Silence (DR1, Mon 23:15), a spooky BBC crime miniseries, is life-long: she’s deaf. Portrayed by a real-life deaf actress, and backed up by a stellar cast including Hugh Bonneville, it ultimately fails to live up to the promising premise – a common mishap of most British dramas these days.
Most mishaps involving British musicians in the ‘60s involved LSD, and you’d be lost without it on Magical Mystery Tour (SV2, Sat 20:00), a film made by the Beatles that ended up providing videos for many of their songs – most notably ‘I Am the Walrus’. The progamme is one of several marking the 50th anniversary of the Beatles’ debut release ‘Love me Do’. Among them is Nowhere boy, a moving film about the teenage years of John Lennon.
Elsewhere, US scifi series Falling Skies (TV3+, Thu 22:00) makes its debut; it’s a good week for new films with Guy Ritchie’s Rocknrolla (K6, Mon 21:00), Prince of Persia (K5, Thu 21:00), Soloman Kane (K5, Sat 21:45) and Shanghai (DR2, Fri 20:00) all making their bows; we’ve got the 2011 season of Hell’s Kitchen (TV3 Puls, Thu 22:00); don’t miss the second series of medical comedy Getting On (SV2, Mon 19:30), which stars British comedienne Jo Brand, a former pychiatric nurse.
