Katie Hopkins. Louise Mensch. The greatest screen double act since De Niro and Pacino?
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Version 0 of 1. “Now, for the first time, America’s two most electrifying actors collide!” Thus spake the trailer for Michael Mann’s Heat, which starred Robert De Niro and Al Pacino (the pair had never shared a scene in The Godfather Part II). Twenty years on, this column finds itself impossibly tantalised by dreams of another explosive double act, and demands you see the following two words in six-foot-high letters: MENSCH. HOPKINS. How is it possible that these two extraordinary talents have never worked together? In a world – in a world – where control of the discourse has basically been ceded to four daytime TV bookers and anyone willing to monster a kid on Twitter, the fact that no one has been able to put together a deal that could appeal to Louise Mensch and Katie Hopkins is nothing short of a cultural scandal. Both are very much available. Louise is the former Tory MP who retired from parliament in 2012 because she could never top her spectacularly hilarious performance in the phone-hacking select committee hearings, where she explained to James Murdoch that she had to leave early to pick her kids up. “I believe we have children the same age,” she smiled at James (who disappointingly failed to reply: “Yeah, I’m a bit tied up with work at this precise moment – speak to my nanny about playdates.”) Louise now lives in Manhattan, where she starts each day with a wistful musical number entitled “When will America notice me?” in which she sings the chorus at her reflection in one of those novelty Time magazine mirrors that makes her look like she is on the cover, before sitting down to her computer for 18 hours’ frantic tweeting about something or other, in a city widely held as one of the most exciting in the world. New York, New York, so good they made her spend half the week twatting on and on at some kid from Merseyside. Yes, this is the business about Louise’s alleged bullying of a 17-year-old girl who was something to do with the Milifandom thing. If you need more info, her latest utterance on the subject at time of going to press was a 4,000-word blogpost – 4,000! Jeez, Louise – I think the Sunday Times did thalidomide in less than that. As for Katie, the so-called Queen of Mean remains the villain of choice for talentless talent bookers, but has already ticked off appearances on most of the first-, second- and third-tier reality shows. I imagine Katie deals with the “quiet” weeks with the self-awareness of Withnail, who dismissed the idea of a bad patch with the retort: “Rubbish! Haven’t seen Gielgud down the labour exchange.” This week found her insulting a child with autism for reasons I can’t be bothered to look up. The point is: there are windows in her schedule. Unfortunately, you just know that there will be producers pitching ideas designed to take Katie on some kind of vision quest, probably via some terrible shit-out-of-water format in which she’s confronted with her prejudices and encouraged to grow. But if you’d rather watch yourself be disembowelled than tune in to Katie Hopkins’ Migrant Journeys, might I suggest some programme ideas with the added benefit of pairing our emergent icons? Katie and Louise Inspired by the movie Thelma and Louise, this drama has two obvious heroines, but is expected to make a breakout star of the cliff edge used in its final scene. (Anyway, post-Broadchurch and Poldark, you can’t get commissioned without a cliff.) After Katie calls a child a “fat Nazi” in self-defence, she and Louise are forced to go on the run in some sort of objectionable car – probably a Range Rover Evoque. Owing to a series of unspecified previous controversies, they can’t drive through half the counties that would permit a direct route to freedom, and have to navigate a roundabout path via various telly sofas and media platforms. Throughout this inexorably doomed journey they are pursued by a sensitive cop, played by Leslie Grantham. Mastershit With “conflict” and social media typhoonery now the holy grail of all televisual enterprise, it was inevitable the BBC would find itself here for the third part of its highly acclaimed Master trilogy, which also includes Mastermind and MasterChef. Mastershit, AKA the Great British Hate-off, pits Hopkins and Mensch against one another in a series of gruelling rounds designed to crown one or other of them – but most likely Katie – Britain’s Most Controversial. These include the minor round, which seeks to establish which of these two over-40-year-olds can be most lavishly unpleasant to someone under the age of 18, and the specialist subject round. Louise’s area of expertise is Jewish history, inspired by the time she declared herself implacably opposed to anyone who used the term Zionist. Even Theodor Herzl, wondered someone. “Who?” Louise hit back. “If he uses Zionist, then yes. Cheap code word for Jew. Antisemitism. Not having it.” Katie’s specialist skill, meanwhile, is listening to an interlocutor read out a series of phrases and identifying whether they originated in her published output or the Nuremberg Laws. Hearts of Darkness As any regular readers of this column will know, in the years BD (Before Downton), there was one rule to ITV Sunday-night drama. Anything in the 8pm timeslot had to either have the word “heart” in the title, or be part of what we might respectfully call the Heartbeat universe. The first category included things such as Where the Heart Is and Wild at Heart, while Heartbeat – the overlap in our Venn diagram – spawned 60s hospital drama The Royal. The Royal itself would go on to spawn The Royal Today. Anyway, Hearts of Darkness revives this golden era of broadcasting. Premise? Katie and Louise play palliative care nurses. Drama ensues. It’s set somewhere rural – obviously somewhere with a cliff – which allows for gorgeous aerial shots to make up for any gaping plot holes. Maybe Dover. Yes, it’s a palliative care hospice on the white cliffs of Dover. We’ll thrash out the rest later, but I can tell you now that it features vigilante border patrols and a permanently appalled Pam Ferris. Hopkins & Mensch Or Mensch & Hopkins – their agents can fight about the billing. The key thing is, it’s a buddy cop show in which two strong characters are thrown together and forced to solve a crime. Crucially, of course, these are lady cops, with all the investigative drawbacks that implies – namely, they can’t just crack a case by going to one of their toms for a tip-off and a freebie. In fact, for the first few episodes, the investigation seems to be going nowhere, mainly because every time they get a suspect into custody, DS Mensch releases them without charge on the basis that she has to go and pick up her kids. But as the series advances, the pair’s working partnership gels to devastating effect, and their mastery of the classic “bad cop, bad cop” routine culminates in an interrogation scene so extreme it will never leave you. Series two is set in The Hague. |