Spider House; How To Get Away With Murder review – how not to treat a partner

http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2014/oct/30/spider-house-how-to-get-away-with-murder-review

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It’s been a big year for spiders. We’ve had such a clement summer in Britain that our native spiders – not even those terrifying tropical ones that creep onto your Facebook feed because they hitched a ride on supermarket bananas – are fatter than ever. Bad news for arachnophobes, and flies. But good news for Dr Alice Roberts, whose charming documentary Spider House (BBC4) is a timely explanation of why we should love, or at least be fascinated by, the eight-legged critters.

When I was little my grandma told me never to kill a spider because they were good for the garden. I’ve lived in London for long enough to forget what a garden looks like, but because of that advice I am not one of the estimated 25 per cent of the population who runs from spiders screaming. I’ll even let one crawl onto my hand from the bath so I can tip it out of the window. It’s by far the toughest thing about me. Even so, Spider House made me question my loyalties, particularly the gruesome process of making arachnid babies.

First, the good stuff. Spiders kill and eat flies and other disease-carrying instincts, which mean they make our houses safer. Lovely expert Tim Cockerill, who seems to be in a permanent state of having just received the best news of his life whenever he discusses spiders, just can’t understand why we fail to appreciate them. Look, here’s a common house spider grooming its own legs, like a cat. Here’s another one having a drink of water from the bath, like a cat. And here’s yet another one, dismembering a fly that it has pulled into a web rapidly spun through a mixture of complex weaving, silk stronger than steel and charges of static electricity. My cat’s idea of weaving involves getting tangled up in the duvet then miaowing pathetically for help, so I’m starting to think that, maybe, spiders are better than cats. Particularly the diving bell spider, which carries a bubble of air around on its bum and can stay submerged in water for days. If only arachnophobes could get through their terror and watch this, I think, then they might be cured by the wonder of nature. There’s even some reassurance that spiders won’t crawl into your mouth while you sleep – a common fear – because they know you’re a big animal, and are more concerned with not getting killed than sniffing out your morning breath.

And then, Spider House starts to get dark. Lovely British spiders haven’t really got the bite of their tropical siblings, but just to show you what tarantulas can do there’s a slide of what happens to blood cells when they are attacked – demolished – by venom. They still look like donuts, but donuts that have been left in a room with Homer Simpson. Then there’s the whole mating process, which is risky for male spiders, because the bigger, solitary females have a tendency to attack and eat their potential mates. The cameras manage to film the whole curious, delicate process of baby-making, involving a sort of curtsey-dance and two spermy legs finding the reproductive glands around the back. This time, the male gets away unscathed – though, Dr Alice notes sadly, he’s unlikely ever to meet his offspring. If they’re as friendly as their mother, he should be grateful.

At 90 minutes, Spider House is way too long, and its central conceit – filling a disused mansion with spiders, going through their special skills room-by-room, then forcing Dr Alice to spend a Blair Witch-style night in there alone with them – is a little overcooked. But it’s so packed with enthusiasm and facts and weirdness (particularly the spider having its silk harvested, by which I mean pulled out of its behind with a homemade spindle, “harmlessly”) that it just about gets away with it. The only real shame is that the people who really could do with learning just how complex and fascinating these critters are will be unlikely to go anywhere near it.

How To Get Away With Murder (Universal) is the latest drama from Shonda Rhimes, who’s behind Scandal and Grey’s Anatomy. Though there’s a legal setting here, it’s more of the same, in that it has the confidence of a blockbuster, barely pauses for breath and is watchable in the extreme. Viola Davies is the hotshot lawyer with a complicated private life, and this week she defends a man accused of killing his second wife, who happily admits to killing his first. Perhaps he’d picked up a few relationship tips from spiders.