Dandies, toffs and flower girls, it's a one-stop shop of make-believe: Christopher Stevens reviews last 週末's TV

By Christopher Stevens for the Daily Mail

Published: 20:54 BST, 10 November 2013 | Updated: 22:44 BST, 10 November 2013

The 楽園 (BBC 1) ★★★★? ? ????????? Tutankhamun (Channel 4) ★★★??

Eleven days into Movember, the month when men sprout facial hair for charity, there are a lot of thinly furred upper lips around. So much for the luxuriant walrus moustaches we aspire to - the best most of us can manage is a threadbare caterpillar.

My own 成果／努力 looks like a pair of 誤った eyelashes have been glued under my nose and are now? moulting. I shall probably 訴える手段／行楽地 to Groucho Marx’s trick, and daub one on with greasepaint.

So it’s galling that John Moray (Emun Elliott), 経営者／支配人 of The 楽園 (BBC1), has stubble that appears to breathe, out and in. When he arrives for work, he is unshaven; by lunchtime, he is swarthy; by teatime, he has a 十分な bea rd; and at の近くにing time he’s 支援する to sandpaper again.

Hair today: John Moray, 権利 as played by Emun Elliott, 陳列する，発揮するs an impressive variety of facial hair in the 最新の episode of The 楽園

It’s a 思い出の品 that the events of a 選び出す／独身 day in this 1890s department 蓄える／店 are 現実に filmed over a week or more. Our illusions are not spoiled, because The 楽園 flaunts its make-believe so 率直に.

The shop is like a theatre, and its characters are child’s paper dolls, 陳列する，発揮するd on a cardboard 行う／開催する／段階.

They whisper, they kiss, they quarrel, and then they are 素早い行動d backstage for another 衣装 change.

The street, with its glistening flagstones and smoky lights, looks like the 始める，決める for a West End musical.

Drunks totter out of doorways, while dandies strut with their lady admirers, and at any second the entire 生産／産物 might turn into My Fair Mary Poppins Of The Oper a. Toffs and flower girls will be leapfrogging over drayman’s バーレル／樽s and waltzing with chimney sweeps.

It might become too flimsy, if it were not for the dark presence of David Hayman as the one-武装した Mr Jonas. He watches, commenting and prodding, like a sadistic ringmaster.

Last night’s episode opened with Jonas silhouetted against the 十分な moon, in a stovepipe hat as tall as a factory chimney. Johnny Depp couldn’t have played it better.

If we had any 疑問s the department 蓄える／店 is meant to be a theatre, not a supermarket, the staff put on an impromptu music hall last week.

That would be 考えられない in Sunday night’s other period 演劇, Downton Abbey - if Lady Mary danced the can-can or Lord Grantham told jokes in a red nose and a checked jacket, we couldn’t keep believing in them.

Everyone at The 楽園 is an actor, so not only are the melodramas 嵐の - the comedies can be as 幅の広い as possible. That gives Myrtle the cook, played by Lisa Millett, room for fun.

Myrtle’s sense of humour would make Barbara Windsor blush. ‘She sweats smut,’ complained one character after she bounced her cleavage around his ears.

It seemed a dangerous notion to let Myrtle serve tea and cakes to the 顧客s in ladies’ wear - Myrtle probably thought the department was called Lady 断言する.

But it was more dangerous still for Moray to start flirting with his old love Katherine, in 前線 of his fiancee and her husband. We can 推定する／予想する plenty of theatrical bangs, flashes and coloured smoke.

Life for the moneyed classes? in 古代の Egypt was just as? 爆発性の, and death was downright combustible, we learned in Tutankhamun: The Mystery Of The Burnt Mummy (Channel 4).

The pharaoh’s mummified 団体／死体 was 燃やすd to cinders inside its wrappings, thanks to a botched embalming 職業.

燃やすing question: The BBC1 文書の Tutankhamun: The Mystery of the Burnt Mummy 明らかにする／漏らすd that the famous pharaoh had his toes 削減（する） off to squeeze him into a smaller sarcophagus

明らかに, any cotton bundle soaked in linseed oil, parcelled up and left to 乾燥した，日照りの in the 空気／公表する will hea t up to 350c in a spontaneous 化学反応. Every mummy should have been buried with its own? 解雇する／砲火／射撃 extinguisher.

New 分析 of a carving 明らかにする／漏らすd that King Tut, far from 存在 a simpleton schoolboy as we used to think, was a 軍人 king who died in 戦う／戦い.

He せねばならない have been interred with 十分な honours in a magnificent tomb; instead, an evil 助言者 usurped the 王位 and had the king’s hurriedly 包帯d 団体／死体 stuffed into a small sarcophagus. It was so cramped the undertakers had to chop Tut’s toes off.

But the real 新たな展開 was 明らかにする／漏らすd by an X-ray 検視. Tutankhamun was buried without his heart.

A 戦う／戦い-scarred aristo with no toes and no heart ― now there’s a character worthy of The 楽園.