Mint review: A charming romantic drama for these permissive times
The new BBC series comes from Scrapper writer and director Charlotte Regan.
There would have been a time, not so long ago, when Shannon, the luminous lead in BBC One’s Mint, would have been portrayed as a vampire.
If this romantic crime drama had been made in the early 2000s – post-Twilight, when you couldn’t move for bloodsuckers and lycanthropes in the likes of Supernatural, True Blood, Being Human, Crazy Head, The Fades and The Vampire Diaries – Shannon would have been a vamp and her love interest Arran (Benjamin Coyle-Larner, otherwise known as musician Loyle Carner) would have been... oh I don’t know... a zombie?
Rather than star-crossed, the lovers would be witch-cursed and some ancient beef between zombies and vampires would have been the main obstacle in the way of their love.
As it was employed in so many of the shows that made the so-called supernatural boom earlier this century, a mystical element would immediately raise the stakes, if you’ll pardon the pun. Because all dramas live or die on how they answer two questions for their central characters:
- Is there enough at risk?
- Do I want to belong to this gang?
As it is, creatures of the night have had their moment in the sun and it is in the criminal underworld, as opposed to the mythological one, that Charlotte Regan (the creator, writer, director and executive producer) sets Mint.
The aim is the same – to make credible the idea that in these permissive times, there are near-insurmountable obstacles in the way of two single young people in love becoming a couple. That Regan achieves this aim partly, and ironically, because of Mint’s moments of magical realism is just one of the things that make the show so charming.
But then Regan achieves a lot with Mint; not least creating a thoroughly compelling, highly entertaining, deliciously rich dynamic between Shannon (Emma Laird), her romantic mother Cat (Laura Fraser) and her cynical, sexual grandmother Ollie (Lindsay Duncan).
Though Coyle-Larner, Sam Riley and especially Lewis Gribben are all good (even if Riley’s accent occasionally does a wee wander across Scotland) – Mint belongs to Laird, Fraser and Duncan.
In choosing the milieu that she does, Regan places her drama in a long tradition of gangster fiction that has enjoyed a boom of late.
A genre that’s especially popular during periods of economic hardship – so make what you will of its contemporary currency – gangster movies had their first flush of popularity during the 1930s. The 1970s revival heralded by The Godfather and The Godfather Part Two coincided with the oil crisis and consequent shocks to economies across the west.
Today, with a global affordability crisis showing no sign of abating, shows such as MobLand (Paramount+), This City Is Ours (BBC iPlayer) and of course the juggernaut that is Peaky Blinders (BBC iPlayer / Netflix) attract rave reviews and large, loyal audiences.
To cash-strapped viewers being squeezed by the system, criminals have a certain cachet – and Mint speaks to the moment we’re in just as eloquently as This City Is Ours, albeit in more hushed tones.
Even if there are echoes of other gangland dramas in Mint – Ollie has a distant ancestor in The Sopranos’ malign Livia – in both its focus and its form, it is sweet and unique. The BBC describes it as “unconventional”. You could call it “leftfield”. Were it not such a naff word, you’d say it was quirky – because it is quite.
What Mint is completely is Regan’s vision. She’s primarily a filmmaker (her excellent, exuberant Scrapper is currently on iPlayer) who has made music videos for, among others, Stereophonics and Mumford & Sons. Both backgrounds are evident in Mint’s striking filmic visuals.
These go some way to compensate for when Mint feels slight, or doesn’t dig deep enough into the morality of the family who are, lest we forget, a violent, venal, vicious bunch who profit from the miseries of others.
Perhaps Regan and her cast’s finest achievement is not only giving us a gang to which we want to belong, but making us care for these monsters – and there’s not a vampire among them.
All eight episodes of Mint are available on BBC iPlayer now. Episode one airs Monday 20 April at 9pm on BBC One.
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Authors
Gareth McLean has been writing about television for nearly 30 years. As a critic, he's reviewed thousands of programmes. As a feature writer, he's interviewed hundreds of people, from Liza Minnelli to Jimmy Savile. He has also written for TV.
