'Like watching Casablanca in colour' - Pat Fitzpatrick's look back at this week's TV

This week Pat share his thoughts on Sky Atlantic's Little Birds, which is set in the 1940s

Pat Fitzpatrick's TV review

The bad news is it’s dark around 9 pm and the weather isn’t up to much. The good news is we can go back to watching the telly without feeling bad about ourselves. 

Little Birds (Sky Atlantic and Now TV) looks like the kind of six-parter that could get me back in the box-set box seat. It’s been out since the start of August, but I find it hard to watch serious TV when it’s 20 degrees and bright outside.

Little Birds is serious TV, in a way. It’s based on a collection of short stories by the author Anaïïs Nin, written during the 1940s when she was writing erotic fiction for a dollar a day. If the TV show is anything to go by, erotic fiction was way better back then than it is now.

There is need to fast forward to the smutty bits here. (Unless you’re in a rush.) Little Birds has plot, intrigue, brilliant characters and not a whiff of a woman falling in love with a one-dimensional billionaire who likes to spank strangers.

One of the best characters is the location, Tangiers in Morocco. It’s vibrant and luxurious, like watching Casablanca in colour. American heiress, Lucy Savage, arrives there by boat from New York to marry her fiancee, Hugo Cavendish-Smyth. I like that. Hugo Cavendish-Smyth is the obvious name you’d give a posh English character when you’re churning out porn for a dollar an hour.

He’s played deliciously by Hugh Skinner. There is real chemistry between him and Juno Temple, who plays a blinder as Lucy, all free-spirit and entitled, sporting a little gun given to her by her Daddy. ( She’s American, so no one is surprised that her Daddy gave her a gun.)

The thing is, the chemistry between them isn’t sexual. Hugo Cavendish-Smyth is gay. Everyone in Tangiers seems to know this, except poor Lucy Savage, at least in the first episode. The problem is, Hugo is also broke and living beyond his means. So he needs the allowance from Lucy’s creepy Dad who forces poor Hugo into becoming an arms salesman, over the phone, on his wedding night, while Lucy tries and fails to seduce him . 

So instead the newly weds get dressed and head for the best night club in the world, better than Rick’s Place in Casablanca and that’s saying something. There is even a rendition of the French n ational anthem from the stage, except this one is sung in a mocking voice by a dominatrix, aimed at a group of French dignitaries in the front row.

The dominatrix, played by Yumna Marwan, is a complete scene-stealer, and that’s something given the cast in this. Now it’s worth pointing that 12 minutes into episode one, we see her having a pee on a paying customer. So while it isn’t smutty, I wouldn’t necessarily recommend you sit down and watch this with your Mum. But I would definitely recommend you watch it.

If you’re not in the mood for an hour of drama, then dip into Michael Spicer's Room Next Door   on the internet. Start with the Prince Andrew one , you won’t be disappointed.