By Christopher Stevens For The Daily Mail
Published: 20:26 EDT, 18 September 2022 | Updated: 20:28 EDT, 18 September 2022
Goodbye Botox, and forget skin peels. As Jimmy Nesbitt whipped off his balaclava, looking 25 years younger, we entered the age of the electronic facelift.
Nesbitt, playing dirty Belfast copper DCI Tom Brannick in Bloodlands (BBC1), flaunted a taut jawline, unlined forehead and coal-black hair.
A caption flashed up: it was February 1998. Jimmy should have been filming the first series of Cold Feet, with sideburns, and Helen Baxendale as his girlfriend, Rachel — remember when they tried to get frisky in a charity shop window?
Yet here he was, on a dark night in Northern Ireland, killing a couple of bank robbers in cold blood to steal their loot.
Jimmy Nesbitt plays dirty Belfast copper DCI Tom Brannick in Bloodlands
This shot of him, looking half his real age, lasted only a few seconds. But it gave us a glimpse at the future of television. Celebrities have long been doctoring their selfies with computer software. Now telly is catching up. Soon, every actor and presenter will have the option of digital rejuvenation.
Some will be subtle, knocking just a few years off their appearance. Others will want to revert to their teens. No doubt we'll hear a lot of spurious justifications, with stars claiming the technology allows them to 'act their inner age' and 'reveal their true self'.
The magic didn't last long for Jimmy. Flashback over, we returned to 2022, where his hair is frosty grey and the bags under his eyes are more like suitcases.
Bloodlands is a swaggering thriller, with an orchestral soundtrack that evokes spaghetti Westerns and a storyline to match, about stolen guns and gold.
It's apparently inspired by the Northern Bank heist in 2004, when IRA terrorists escaped with more than £26 million — much of which has never been recovered.
In this fictional retelling, £11 million has been snatched from the Irish Savings Bank and an accountant suspected of laundering the money has turned up dead.
DCI Brannick's first instinct, after discovering the body, was to dash to a disused oil tank next to a shed. He prised it open and was horrified to find nothing inside.
Meanwhile, the dead accountant's wife (Victoria Smurfit) was also in a hurry, heading for her hubby's storage unit. Inside, once again, was nothing.
If I wanted to hide £11 million in gold bullion, I wouldn't use a rusty old tank or a lock-up with a flimsy padlock.
There was a nasty moment when Brannick quizzed an informant in an empty nightclub. Traumatised by Adrian Dunbar's singing detective act over on ITV, in Ridley, I was afraid Nesbitt might start crooning some melancholy ballad. But he didn't, and Bloodlands is worth an extra star for that alone.
Frozen Planet II (BBC1) deserves a week's supply of extra stars for its endlessly stupendous photography. Among the exceptional sequences was film of 30 beluga whales, trapped in a lagoon in the Arctic ice.
A drone looked down on them, circling like minnows in a pond, then the picture dived under-water and followed them as they made a break for freedom through the splintering floes.
Other astonishing images included walruses rolling down a beach into the sea, like children playing on a hillside, and orcas killing a juvenile bowhead whale — ramming it to break its ribs, then leaving it to drown.
Nature is cruel, but orcas (also called killer whales) appear to actively enjoy the cruelty.
Perhaps what's most remarkable is the ability of the film crews to be in the right place to capture spontaneous behaviour — such as an impromptu ballet by two young polar bears sliding across ice. Wonderful!
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