Matthew d’Ancona’s culture: Suspect: The Shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes and the questions the Met left unanswered

Hot on the heels of the BBC’s superb documentary, 7/7: The London Bombings, comes this fine four-part series, written by Jeff Pope and directed by Paul Andrew Williams. Digging deep into a public scandal, it is yet another excellent example of the dramatic genre that was sent into orbit 15 months ago by ITV’s Mr Bates v the Post Office.

As most will (or should) recall, Jean Charles de Menezes (Edison Alcaide) was the 27-year-old Brazilian electrician shot and killed by firearms officers at Stockwell tube station on July 22, 2005, only 15 days after the 7/7 terrorist atrocities. What many will have forgotten, or never have known, is the full extent of the errors made by police in the hours before de Menezes was killed, or the shameful misinformation (if not outright disinformation) that was pumped out as Met commissioner Sir Ian Blair (Conleth Hill) sought to limit the reputational damage arising from the tragedy.

One of the greatest strengths of the series is that it establishes in uncompromising detail the shocking context of the initial explosions, which killed 52 people and injured more than 770 others. The police work in those first days, as Tony Blair hosted the G8 summit in Scotland and the world’s eyes were upon London, was of a very high standard in a situation of extraordinary pressure. As assistant commissioner Andy Hayman (Max Beesley) says, as the scale of the massacre becomes clear, there are “quite literally thousands of body parts”.

Nor, crucially, does Suspect omit the second wave of bomb attacks on July 21, which were fortuitously thwarted by the faulty design of explosive devices. On the day of de Menezes’s shooting, the Met believed four terrorists (in fact, there were five) were still at large and chased a lead to Scotia Road in south London, where de Menezes happened to be living. 

Thus, the prelude to disaster is addressed comprehensively: Pope cannot be accused of minimising the stressful circumstances in which the fatal pursuit of de Menezes took place. 

Equally, he is no less punctilious in showing what went wrong, how flawed the surveillance operation under the command of Cressida Dick (Emily Mortimer) really was, and how the firearms officers on the scene were uncertain of the precise rules of engagement even as they approached de Menezes. 

“He cannot be allowed to get on a train,” she says. But what, precisely, did that mean? And were all 17 members of the public in the carriage wrong when they recalled no warning being given before shots were fired?

In a uniformly excellent cast – the outstanding Daniel Mays has a relatively minor role as forensic explosives expert, Cliff Todd – the pick of the bunch is Russell Tovey as deputy assistant commissioner Brian Paddick. Twenty-one years since his break-out role in Alan Bennett’s The History Boys, Tovey is now one of our finest actors; there are no heights beyond him. 

In the claustrophobic corridors of Scotland Yard, Paddick becomes increasingly disillusioned with Blair’s leadership and the lack of candour with which the Met is conducting itself in the aftermath of the killing. What Tovey conveys brilliantly is the moral dilemma this presents. Paddick believes profoundly in his work as a copper and must wrestle with his conscience before confronting the commissioner.

Also good is Laura Aikman as Lana Vandenberghe, a secretarial worker at the Independent Police Complaints Commission who turned whistleblower, was held in a police cell for a day and lost her job.

To this day, the family of de Menezes has received no true justice for his killing. What this compelling drama shows is that it is precisely at such moments of extreme tension, when nerves are shredded and the human psyche tested to the limit, that a democracy discloses its best and worst characteristics.

Dealer’s Choice

(Donmar Warehouse, London, until June 7)

When Patrick Marber’s first play opened at the Royal National Theatre in 1995, its cast included Ray Winstone and Phil Daniels. Now, to mark its 30th anniversary, it returns, directed, this time around, by Matthew Dunster.

Addressing themes as timeless as masculinity, chance, fatherhood, recklessness and status anxiety, Dealer’s Choice still feels sharply contemporary. Stephen (Daniel Lapaine) is the restaurant owner who hosts a poker game every Sunday night in his basement. His son Carl (Kaspar Hilton-Hille), who is in financial trouble, brings along a newcomer, Ash (Brendan Coyle), supposedly one of his school teachers. 

Mugsy (Hammed Animashaun), a waiter with a desperate dream to turn a Mile End toilet into his own restaurant, is looking for investment and has a maddening habit of yelling “Deeemonds!” whenever a diamond card is dealt. Sweeney (Theo Barklem-Biggs) is the cook, reluctant to play as he is supposed to be seeing his young daughter in the morning. Another waiter, Frankie (Alfie Allen), longs to become a poker professional.

Marber knows the game inside out and relishes its etiquette, psychology and variants (Omaha; Hold’em; Five card draw, jacks or better). But you don’t have to know a thing about poker to appreciate this superb production and what it has to say about the place in the night where compulsion, ambition and reality collide.

The Accountant 2

(General release)

Nine years ago, Ben Affleck played Christian Wolff, an autistic mathematical savant working as a forensic accountant for all manner of shady characters, and also (but of course) a skilled assassin. 

Need you ask? His father had been involved in military black ops: hence his implausible skills as marksman and martial artist, talents shared, as it turned out, with his long-lost hitman brother Braxton (Jon Bernthal). 

Christian developed a romantic interest in fellow accountant Dana Cummings (Anna Kendrick) and worked covertly with Raymond King (JK Simmons) in the US Financial Crimes Enforcement Network to bring down the bad guys; while funnelling huge sums into the Harbor Neuroscience Academy in New Hampshire. And that was that.

Unexpectedly, however, the original Accountant was a sleeper hit and developed a cult following on streaming services. So here, even more surprisingly, is a heavily marketed sequel, reuniting director Gavin O’Connor and writer Bill Dubuque, with Affleck, Bernthal, Simmons and Cynthia Addai-Robinson (as King’s successor, Marybeth Medina) all back in action – though not, this time, Kendrick.

In the second instalment of what now seems likely to be a franchise, Chris and Braxton are more straightforwardly engaged in an all-action escapade, on the trail of mysterious killer-for-hire Anaïs (Daniella Pineda) and a seriously nasty human trafficker called Burke (Robert Morgan). Though the sequel continues to explore Chris’s relationship with the world as a neurodivergent person, his deepening connection with his long-estranged brother shifts the focus squarely into the Murtaugh-Riggs territory of the Lethal Weapon movies. 

And no bad thing. This is hokum, but very entertaining all the same. Bernthal and Affleck are visibly enjoying the unforeseen opportunity to reprise their roles and make a convincing pair of every-so-slightly-psychotic outlaws trying to make good. One of the best popcorn movies of the year so far.

Havoc

(Netflix)

What, another action flick? Yes, but this one stars the James-Bond-that-never-was, Tom Hardy. And – more to the point – it’s directed by Gareth Evans, the genius behind genre classics The Raid (2011) and The Raid 2 (2014).

Detective Patrick Walker (Hardy, at his burly, haunted best) is a cop made of pure scar tissue, shambling in his parka, on the take from corrupt politician Lawrence Beaumont (Forest Whitaker). But, in this film, almost all the cops are on the take and Evans establishes early on that Walker is only supplementing his wages illicitly so he can provide for his estranged wife and daughter.

Not so his properly nasty colleague Vincent (Timothy Olyphant), who, along with his henchmen, is up to no good at all, embroiled in the drugs trade and battles with the Triads. It’s just Walker’s luck that Beaumont’s son Charlie (Justin Cornwell) has been identified as the killer of a Triad princeling, and that is he tasked, in return for final debt clearance, with getting him to safety. In pursuit of Walker is his rookie sidekick Ellie Cheung (Jessie Mei Li): tough, but not yet ruined by the job.

All of which is a framework for Evans doing what he does best: stunningly kinetic, wildly violent action sequences that owe more to manga culture, video games and the Chang Cheh and Liu Chia Liang kung fu movies of the 1970s than to conventional Hollywood action cinema. 

Car chases, firefights, arbitrary window-smashing and the occasional pseudo-philosophical remark (“You live in this world. You make choices. Choices you try to justify”). It took Evans four years to get Havoc on to our screens. Let’s hope it doesn’t take so long next time.

Moral Ambition: Stop Wasting Your Talent and Start Making a Difference, by Rutger Bregman

(Bloomsbury)

I have long admired the writings of Dutch historian and best-selling author Rutger Bregman, and, in his latest book, he shifts up a couple of gears to challenge explicitly his readers’ priorities and their readiness to do rather than simply to feel. We should not, he says, “prize awareness more than action”, and confuse performative gestures with real-world consequences: “Your honour is not the same as your reputation. It’s not about looking good; it’s about doing good”.

Framed as a how-to book, and closely aligned with his School for Moral Ambition, launched last year in New York and Amsterdam, this is a manual for our times, full of historical case studies from the abolitionist era, the civil rights movement and the legislative crusades of Ralph Nader. Bregman has no patience for the “Noble Loser” or those who seek to be saints at the expense of action and of contact with the crooked timber of humanity. 

He insists that “the right thing often happens for the wrong reason”, that successful strategies require meticulous coalition-building, and that the arc of justice only “bends towards justice” as a consequence of wily human agency. He is also admirably unimpressed by those who centre themselves in the moral universe and ahead of meaningful, prioritised action.

You can hear Rutger Bregman in discussion with TNE founder and editor-in-chief Matt Kelly and me on the episode of The Two Matts posted on April 22