Cartoon criminals

Coup! (BBC2, Friday) was quite a brave programme. It was the story of the failed mercenary coup in Equatorial Guinea, a tiny but oil-sodden tyranny on the west coast of Africa. This was led by an adventurer called Simon Mann (I have often said it is a great mistake to trust anyone called Simon, unless, possibly, they are in hairdressing) and supported by Mark Thatcher. It would have been easy to run this as a grim, heart-of-darkness drama, with lessons for us all about the evil nature of imperialism, or the vile conspiracies of multinational corporations. Instead, they played it boldly, to a large extent, for laughs. The clue was in the name of the writer, John Fortune, who is best known these days for his duologues with John Bird on Bremner, Bird and Fortune on Channel 4 — which, though a comedy, is one of the few serious programmes left on that station.