The values, mores and behaviour of the English middle classes had two major media outings (in both the senses the word now has) this past TV week – one largely comic, the other almost tragic. In both, their fictional tribunes emerged with their values, if not their behaviour, intact.

In Gunrush (ITV1 Sunday) Timothy Spall, that blessing upon us tube watchers, plays an amiable driving instructor whose more powerful wife, objecting to the rudeness of two youths pushing ahead of her in a supermarket queue, causes one of them to turn on her, pistol in hand, and shoot her teenage daughter dead. Spall, his determined cheeriness worn away by grief and his wife’s contempt for his temporising weakness, descends into the ever-deeper circles of the south London gang culture hell that has enfolded the two youths, his Virgil a motor-mouthing crackhead who – improbably – enables him to spot the culprits. One, guilt-ridden, is unable to stop his violent, cornered friend from attempting to kill a gang boss. Improbably once more, Spall finds himself, pistol in hand, confronting the two; at the last moment he baulks at execution, only to see them mown down before his eyes by a soldier from the rival gang.

Political correctness about portraying black gang culture is now vestigial. It has been burned away by the gangs’ evident murderousness, most of all towards those in them or caught in their crossfire, and by the courage of those, mainly women, who form desperate “citizens against violence” groups to plead for their young to stay clear of the bewitching drug and crime networks.

The charge that such dramas are white racism is now hard to make stick, which leaves writers and directors free to explore the layers of fear and resentment that such societies spawn. A scene in a billiard hall, where the two youths’ godfather stages a mock execution on the violent one to teach him that he cannot endanger gang security by the random shooting of a white girl, is a brilliantly dark exchange. There are, though, too many “magic” moments, when coincidence and luck are stretched too far. The relationship between Spall and his wife (finely played by Deborah Findlay) is not given enough space, nor is that between the repentant youth and his grandmother, who strives to keep him safe and straight.

But as a whole the piece is moving, and it shows well the irruption of unthinking evil into happy and orderly lives. And in putting the gun at the centre of the drama, it emphasises the “rush” which a gun confers on men lured to its service by its fascination. Spall keeps faith with his own goodness in extremis: decency holds, stemming the progress of the play to full-blown revenge tragedy.

The comedy of Jam and Jerusalem (BBC1 Sunday) is of manner and character. The story of this three-parter is that of a village society in which a barn is being renovated into a luxury home for – it is generally believed – Charles Dance, a mature woman’s heart-throb. The women’s guild secures him as a gala speaker: all is set up to fail until he turns up, then bores them rigid with rambling reminiscences.

Jam and Jerusalem was written by Jennifer Saunders, and also features her as the squire’s wife – curt, ineffectual and given to suggestive malapropisms. Her old partner in the funniest women’s comedy duo ever, Dawn French, plays Rosie, a dual-personality proletarian mess, hilarious in dreadful gear clothing her bulky figure, outrageous but often morally right. Sal Vine (Sue Johnston), the central character, is a practice nurse whose uptight doctor-son has tried to banish her from his surgery: she sees clients privately, leading to a rumour that she is a prostitute. She fights the giant Scots builder over the barn’s renovations, then falls for him.

The ladies of a certain age, some of the best comic actresses available, still want love and sex they mostly cannot have. The comedy comes out of their shifts to have one or the other, to get one over each other, to soothe waning youth with a bit too much to drink. It also comes from the playing of roles that could descend into stereotype but which constantly challenge it. Sal’s daughter, a hippy who has married another and lives with him in a converted mobile library which never gets out of her mother’s garden, is a picture of ludicrous “wow man” self-absorption – yet, like her brother, attains a moment of maturity in approving her mother’s alliance with “Jock”. The writing and direction, in this third series, is assured and cool. It should return.

A final squib. Walk on the Wild Side (BBC1 Saturdays) plays into that British love of anthropomorphising animals, where pleasure comes from putting words in their mouths or moods in their heads. The programme puts dialogue over clips from animal programmes, to produce little scenes – as two giraffes bickering over whether the male looked at a pretty girl; brown bears catching fish in a stream while explaining the theory and practice of salmon spawning; camels foaming at the mouth cursing a new toothpaste. It’s simple and delightful.

john.lloyd@ft.com
More columns at www.ft.com/lloyd