'Quite breathtaking' . . . Glenn Close in Damages
Watching Glenn Close is like taking a cold plunge bath: quite breathtaking and wholly invigorating. Last night she was back as the magnificent, manipulative lawyer Patty Hewes in the new series of Damages (BBC1), intent on bringing down a Madoff-like character called Lewis Tobin and – if the last two series are anything to go by – anyone else who gets in her way.
As ever, the plot has been given a quick whizz in the narrative Moulinex. The story switches from just after her success at bringing down the Enron-type conspiracy of the last series to six months later, when she is the apparent victim of a hit-and-run car accident caused by a vehicle registered to her associate Tom Shayes, who, it is revealed in the final scenes – look away now if you are saving this up – is now a dead body in a dumpster. Found nearby is the Chanel bag Patty gave her former protégée/patsy/nemesis Ellen six months earlier – ie back in the present. Add in a further dose of flashbacks to previous events within the Tobin clan, and you have every excuse for a stiff drink to see you through.
In the present, Ellen now has what I'm sure she hopes will be a relatively straightforward job in the DA's office. They are intent on building the criminal case against Tobin while Patty tries to discover where the $70bn of Ponzi proceeds went. When his son seems ready to crack under media pressure, Patty hires one of his victims to provoke him into a public assault, thereby widening the cracks enough for secrets to spill out. Joe should think himself lucky. When Patty wanted to build animosity to Ted Danson in series one, she had someone's pet dog killed. I hope no one in the Tobin family is planning on leaving any babies unattended.
It is too early to tell whether Damages has completely returned to form – even the parlous second series began well – but the signs look good and Close in particular looks fabulous. A walking masterclass in – well, everything.
A favourite argument of those who oppose immigration is that migrant workers "take our jobs". The Day the Immigrants Left, presented by Evan Davies (BBC1), went to Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, a town with thousands of eastern European workers and 2,000 local people on the dole. The producers arranged for 12 of the latter to replace 12 of the former for two days to see if they were as ready, willing and able to work at anything as a) they claimed and b) their immigrant counterparts were.
Half turned up late or not at all. "I won't do a job I don't find very interesting," said 26-year-old Lewis, who has been unemployed for five years and was supposed to go to a potato factory. "I do feel a little bit pressurised to get a job, but it's not to the point that I can just take any job that comes." Those that did eventually arrive were a woeful sight. Paul and Terry insisted that the potato-sorting machines had been set deliberately fast (they had actually been slowed down to accommodate the two trainees), one of many examples from the British workers of a persistent and fatally crippling sense of grievance and entitlement.
Carpenter Dean reacted with fury to his Lithuanian supervisor's instructions to use screws rather than a nail gun, which would take longer but make his plasterboard work stand firm. Ashley quit his restaurant job halfway through his first lunchtime on his first day and then sat down happily to eat the meal offered by his saintly employer Ali.
You looked in vain for a glimmer of shame or embarrassment in any of them, but came up emptyhanded. You could try to tell yourself that their attitudes masked the insecurities that come with unemployment, and at times Davies bent over backwards to put a better gloss on their behaviour: at one point, he tried to suggest to the farm owner that availability of foreign labour had made employers lazy when it came to "coaxing and motivating" local workers. But it was hard not to suspect, as you watched the infuriating dozen, stunned by the prospect of physical labour, resentful of any advice, childish and utterly unmotivated by the presence of a television crew or the knowledge that even their greatest perceived sufferings would be over within 48 hours, that the natives might just be revolting.
