Drama that's so uptight, it could be a French & Saunders spoof: CLAUDIA CONNELL reviews last weekend's TV 

By Claudia Connell for the Daily Mail

Published: 16:46 EST, 12 July 2015 | Updated: 18:16 EST, 12 July 2015

The Outcast (BBC1) 

Rating:

Joanna Lumley's Trans-Siberian Adventure (ITV)

Rating:

Returning from war, Gilbert Aldridge greeted his nine-year-old son Lewis with a manly handshake before telling him to be quiet and speak when spoken to.

The message was clear: Gilbert was not the world’s most natural or demonstrative father. All the more unfortunate for poor little Lewis, who was about to lose his mother.

The Outcast (BBC1) is a coming-of-age drama about a boy’s difficult transition into adulthood while weighed down by the grief and guilt he feels at the death of his mother.

Coming-of-age drama: BB1's adaptation of Sadie Jones' best-selling book feels rather more like a French & Saunders satire, despite fantastic performances 

When his laced up, emotionally stunted father was stationed in Africa during World War, II Lewis and his free-spirited mother Lizzie were left to their own devices. Lewis enjoyed a blissful childhood of bike riding, picnics and fishing in the Surrey countryside.

During one mother and son picnic, Lizzie stripped off and dived into the lake. Unsteady after a few too many gins she got into trouble and never resurfaced. Lewis made a valiant attempt but could not save her.

Unable to channel his own grief, let alone comfort his traumatised son, Gilbert packed Lewis off to boarding school and set about finding himself a new wife — at task that took him a matter of weeks.

Alice (Jessica Brown Findlay, best known as Downton’s Lady Sybil) became Lewis’ new stepmother. She wasn’t wicked, she just wasn’t particularly nice. The longer she struggled to conceive a child of her own, the more she resented her stepson.

Little wonder that by the time he turned 16 Lewis was a hard drinking, self-harming loner who was more than handy with his fists.

‘There is something very wrong with you,’ said his father, played perfectly by Greg Wise, who really captured the essence of a man who knew he was failing his son, yet was too restricted by his upbringing to do anything about it. In his view, not taking a belt to his child was demonstration enough of his love.

The two actors who played Lewis as a boy (Finn Elliot and George MacKay) both turned in fantastic performances and yet, somehow, this adaptation of Sadie Jones’s bestselling novel was the tiniest bit lacking.

I don’t know whether it was the clipped dialogue or the beautiful, uptight toffs — but there were times when it felt rather more like a French & Saunders satire.

Sunday night’s episode ended with Lewis sentenced to two-and-a-half years imprisonment for burning down his village church. Will a spell inside straighten the troubled lad out? Don’t bank on it. 

Traveller: Actress Joanna Lumley begins her 6,300-mile journey in Beijing for her Trans-Siberian Adventure for ITV, and gives a stern talking to to a Chinese woman who likes to take selfies while driving her Rolls-Royce (file photo)

Joanna Lumley hops on a train for her trans-Siberian adventure

A stern talking to from Joanna Lumley might have done the trick though. In the opening part of Joanna Lumley’s Trans-Siberian Adventure (ITV) the best part was when she ticked off a young Chinese woman who liked to take selfies . . . while driving her Rolls-Royce.

In Beijing, at the start of her 6,300-mile journey, Joanna visited the world’s most successful Rolls-Royce dealership, where £500,000 motors are sold on a daily basis in a city where the average annual salary is £2,000.

Property tycoon Madame Lu proudly drove her Roller up and down the streets insisting that the poor people enjoyed the spectacle. She also liked to photograph herself as she drove.

‘Darling, not the mobile phone. You mustn’t!’ said alarmed passenger Joanna. But Madame Lu was rich, therefore she could do whatever she wanted.

The first leg of Joanna’s journey took her into Mongolia and the Gobi Desert, where she met a shaman who proved that charlatans exist the world over.

Supposedly blessed with psychic powers, he delivered the sort of vague guff about deceased relatives that you’d expect from any end-of-the-pier clairvoyant.

An old hand at these travel shows, it’s fair to say that Joanna is unlikely to ever pay for another holiday again. And, to be fair, she does it so well.

Her easy charm coupled with her wide-eyed wonder at all she sees make her shows such relaxing and pleasant viewing. And who could tire of that absolutely fabulous voice?

• Christopher Stevens is away. 

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