Secret menace and hidden fear

Press, 17 June 1988, Page 11

Secret menace and hidden fear

Ken Strongman

on television

The latest Beeb series to take an apparently authentic look at the world of crime is aptly named. “Hideaway” discloses a world of secrets. Men keep things from women, women from men, adults from children and children from adults. Above, below and around all, the rain and murk keep things from everybody. British television must employ writers with very dodgy backgrounds, they know this world so well. The crude vies with the sharp, tinsel with tawdry, facade with veneer. Quiet voices whisper huskily, the words dribbling from the corners of mouths into ’phones, or just in passing. The muted words are barely discernible, since they are expressed in a lingo best described as ingroup cryptic.

The alternative is a vast, roaring aggression, a vicious, furious wordspit punctuated by fingers waving, or more menacingly, just pointing, a centimetre from noses. Under everything is a simmering anger fighting with a hidden fear. Punch-ups are a word away and the thrust of a broken bottle a drink away. Flash cars scythe through it all, windscreen wipers permanently

sweeping, and flankers are being worked by everybody on everybody. Ken Hutchinson is Colin Wright, in his usual role as the thinking man’s crim, constantly on the verge of discovering his own emotions. He has the archetypal London face, voice and manner. He could come from nowhere else. He spends much of the time with his head lowered in an introverted, thought-racing stupor of hidden fears, the veins in his neck standing out like, a racehorse’s.

“Hideaway” is about the relationship between Col and his wife Ann (Clare Higgins,. another near perfect Londoner) as they run from a past of deals gone sour and others too sweet for the liking of the very dangerous Big Tommy. As crime crumbles, so they run with their daughter to wildest Derbyshire. They, so we are led to believe, are ultimately kindhearted, as are their friends. Whilst those against them are ultimately vicious.

Everything matches in “Hideaway.” The music is a fine accompaniment to the usual impressive, face-twitching, bodytensing non-verbals which are the essence of the criminal world. The camera-work is low-key artistic, with lights coming in from all directions, faces in silhouette (who or what are they looking at?) and every possible view of glasses being raised to lips. The most significant thing about this world is that, within it, the men make all the decisions. Women are never consulted; they are either used or treated as pets. Col is not yet an exception to this, even buying a

house as a surprise for Ann and not understanding her upset: “I thought it was what you wanted,” and “If I’d asked you, what would you have said?” But liberation has dipped its toe into this water and Ann does not want to be taken for granted any more. We’ll see. The language, or such of it as is interpretable, is a delight “Either one of you look inside that package, I’ll cut yer ears off’ ... "Back to yer own manor. Never come back, just stay ’ealthy.” But Col is definitely learning to express himself. “Nine out of ten if you ’ave a go at a frightened man, ’e’ll bloody kill yer, ’cause ’e’s afraid of gettin’ ’urt.” It is not that Col is afraid now; he always has been, he’s just said it for the first time and, in this world, saying it means something. The next four episodes will be a necessary part of Monday evening. Tailpiece. The television news is becoming slipshod. On Wednesday, in an item about a possible drug killing, Ron Taylor described Taupo as “world-renowned tourist Mecca.” This might be acceptable in an advertisement, but it is hardly dispassionate news.