Trust, episode three review: a fast-paced but exhausting Falstaffian drama with lashings of style
Danny Boyle knows how to make an entry: anyone suffering from early-onset Getty fatigue after the first two episodes of Trust (BBC Two) got a shock at the start of the third. Grabbed by the lapels and slapped round the chops, you were pretty much ordered to pull yourself together and get stuck in.
A rapid-cut montage featuring much cocaine and conflagration with liberal quotes from the early Seventies jukebox dragged you through the keyhole into John Paul Getty III’s lifestyle of choice, posh Bacchanalian squalor in photogenic Rome, all nude painting and street riots.
The last time we saw the future kidnappee (Harris Dickinson) he was flunking the audition to be anointed his loving grandpa’s heir. You were reminded of Prince Hal failing to tear himself away from the Boar’s Head Tavern. The Falstaff in this story was Bertolini (Giuseppe Battiston), a roly-poly restaurateur and supplier of recreational drugs who couldn’t wait to join the beautiful young kids at a party thrown by Roman Polanski. They made a big mistake when they stood him up.
Bertolini, having already fake-kidnapped young Getty once, became his abductor for real, though it profited him naught: by the end of the episode he’d been garrotted in a sunflower field, after making the mistake of bartering at gunpoint with the cold-blooded slayer Primo (Luca Marinelli).
We’ll be seeing a lot more of the grimly handsome Primo. Perhaps he will manage to keep JPG III quiet as the young Getty’s company is becoming a little grating (in fairness, it rather runs in the family).
This was Boyle’s last hour at the reins. He has established a house style in which bravura back-and-forth jags between past and present tend to trigger dizziness. I’m still wondering whether lashings of style, and an inventive interpretation of the known facts, are quite enough to win hearts and minds. Take Paul’s description of himself as the golden boy: no sooner had he articulated the thought bubble than a fantasy sequence visualised him smearing gold paint over his bare torso. It looked splendid. But too much hectic hallucination gets a bit exhausting. Next at the helm is Dawn Shadforth, a garlanded director of music videos. Don’t expect the pace to slacken.