Burn Up (BBC Two)

Ah, for the halcyon days of Dallas and Dynasty, when oil was the sexy backdrop to all absurd, internecine espionage and sudden shower-based reincarnations. Now, as Burn Up demonstrated, the fun is most definitely over: oil is bad, the acquisition of it involves corruption and environmental destruction on a grand scale. Burn Up is trying desperately to do that BBC thing of being sexy and responsible; a consciousness-raising thriller.

Television drama has become incredibly news-reactive, but does it really ever shed any more light on an issue, or make it more palatable to a general audience than the news itself or a fine documentary? In Burn Up, the arguments about oil production and the environment felt clunky and little more than speechifying.

Writers tend to be antibig business and pro the little guy, so the moral message was also well-worn and not all that challenging – no one wants to see the environment destroyed – and all the hand-wringing and conscience-tweaking were made worse by the now-familiar use of snippets from fictionalised 24-hour news. We’re in danger of forgetting that drama should be drama, not a lecture, and that characters should be characters, not cyphers.

At least Burn Up is written by Simon Beaufoy, who wrote The Full Monty, so, despite the didactic politicking, the pace is unrelenting and the baddies at least are colourful and engaging. Bradley Whitford, lovely Josh in The West Wing, is the not-so-lovely Mack here, the devil on the shoulder of Tom (Rupert Penry-Jones) who has just been made head of the conglomerate Arrow Oil. Whitford villainously devoured every scene: crewcut and madly staring of eye, it was a nice touch making him a secret evangelical too.

Tom’s so nice I didn’t really understand how he became head of an international oil conglomerate and then I got obsessed, fixtures-wise, about his and wife Clare’s (Claire Skinner) kitchen which is as envy-making as David and Samantha Cameron’s. They seemed very like the Camerons, too “big” for the modest house they inhabited – and perhaps Tom taking his bike to work but in a cab was another sneaky Camo-reference?

Tom was so honest that instead of congratulating Mack when the latter blackened the reputation of a scientist (who claimed increased CO2 emissions contributed to climate change), Tom felt ashamed. There’s a mystery involving a man called Masud who has some devastating information from the Sahara Desert, while an Inuit lady, angry at Arrow Oil for destroying her people, set herself on fire in front of Tom.

Marc Warren is brilliant as a government drone of unfixed provenance: he and Whitford had a needling chemistry and Beaufoy gave him some great lines: “I sometimes wonder if my colourful socks make some people underestimate me.” Tom has also fallen for Holly (Neve Campbell), the “head of renewables” at Arrow Oil. Mack tells Holly her position is only “greenwash” to make Arrow look caring and sharing. Any scene with Whitford and Campbell together, him snarling, her looking all impish and button-nosed, had me almost pathetically excited: The West Wing and Party of Five united on screen is pretty near Teeman TV Heaven.

Inevitably, Holly and Tom wind up feeling ethically conflicted together and while visiting a global warming hotspot in isolated Canada – yes, really – they find a shack with some tasteful throws and have sex. Mack says Holly’s a spy (Neve Campbell, a baddie? Take that back!). Shadowy assassins are lurking in the privet. Oh, Tom, not only will the world come to an iceberg-melting end, you’ll lose that lovely kitchen.

The Chuck Show: Storyville (BBC Four)

Another apocalypse, though on a smaller scale, seemed imminent in The Chuck Show: Storyville. Chuck Connelly was a successful artist in the 1980s whose work sold for millions. Now he’s all washed up, and at the beginning of this raucous character study he and his wife were watching his work sell online for $500 a time. Connelly railed at the iniquity of the position he was in, but it was hard to feel any sympathy: he treated his wife so badly she walked out on him. He restarted a 1980s ruse of making paintings under a pseudonym, then hired an actor to play the fictitious artist. That failed, too.

By the end, Connelly had alienated everyone, including his most recent patron who hung his works at his sterile office. Jeff Stimmel, the producer and director, left him lying on the floor of his studio, drinking beer, moaning: “I hate this whole deal.” If you thought that artists were rampaging ego-maniacs – self-absorbed, nightmares to live with, detached from reality – then Storyville confirmed all your prejudices tenfold.

tim.teeman@thetimes.co.uk

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