dinnerladies

There are certain shows that, when they stumble back into your life, you are powerless to resist the urge commanding you to re-watch every episode immediately.  This is what happened to me and dinnerladies last week.  Scrolling through the EPG, innocently just checking if there was anything else that could be on in the background while I cooked, now I have reawakened an intolerance to Friends after so much repeated viewing, I suddenly spotted series one, episode one of Victoria Wood’s classic sitcom from the late nineties nestled in there as the listing for GOLD.  Within seconds of the familiar northern factory canteen set filling the screen, I had series-linked the whole lot.

Despite my strategic approach to which boxsets are lined up to watch once I have finished my current crop, despite all the recommendations people have given me around what I have to get into next (some of which I take on board, others I have no intention of listening to – have fun guessing where you fit in) and despite knowing there weren’t enough minutes before bedtime to get through enough episodes to satiate me, the comedic equivalent of a massive hug had drawn me in.  Sometimes you just have to get a show out of your system.  I was gone.

I have always loved Victoria Wood.  I think it was the fact that her comedy always made my mum laugh which first impressed me.  And not just laugh, but lose all control in fits of hysterics at her incredibly apt and perceptive observations of British life.  My sister and I subsequently whiled away many an hour watching her material on VHS: As Seen On TV, An Audience With (from 1988 where you literally cannot believe the haircuts sported by British showbiz royalty).  I even had the DVD of her stage musical Acorn Antiques sent to me by Lovefilm.  If Victoria Wood had anything to do with something, then I had to watch it.

Her comedy is gentle enough to be comforting, but strong enough to expose life at its most ridiculous.  She could always be relied upon to spot what was ridiculous, mostly because life is ridiculous.  This ridiculousness is then compounded by being British, as this has always been a particularly ridiculous thing to be.  And what’s more ridiculous than being British?  Being a middle-aged British woman.  Not because they themselves are ridiculous, but because what we as a society expect of them is.

Nowhere was this laid bare more deftly than in dinnerladies.  I’m not going to dwell on the lack of capital D.  I’ve made my peace with that.  Let’s instead dwell on how her shrewd observations and the incredible rhythm to her scripts turned the most humdrum of locations into a place where the highs and lows of life were played out with a plausibility that was second to none, all while guaranteeing a good handful of uncontrollable belly laughs.  More than anything, it was the inordinate accuracy of her characters that made the humour so identifiable.  Every walk-on part, from a pie delivery man to a woman asking about the availability of knives in the canteen (as there were no knives), came embellished with some unique quirk or declared behaviour that rooted them in the ridiculousness of reality.

When the show premiered on the BBC in 1998, we were still in an age where the whole family had to watch telly together, at a schedule dictated by the broadcasters and communicated to the masses in glossy tabloid supplements that were saved from the weekend to guide midweek viewing.  dinnerladies regularly pulled audiences around the ten million mark, which is unheard of now you can Netflix yourself silly as and when it suits you.  Even then, most of the names the characters referenced were famous way before more time.  On this third viewing, though, I certainly understood a lot more of the sexual references.  Cleverly wrapped up in layers of innuendo, it was never quite graphic enough for my teenage mind.

This blog is about shows that are special to me, and this is the main reason I have included dinnerladies.  I mentioned my year abroad last week, and while I currently have the benefit of rose-tinted spectacles to look back through on this time, those nine months or so thirteen years ago were difficult.  Living abroad hadn’t exactly been a choice and I missed Britain (and its ridiculousness).  A childhood friend had, by chance, been allocated a school in the same town where we were both language assistants – we sat in the back of classrooms acting as human dictionaries.  With German school starting unfeasibly early, our working days were done by about ten each morning.  Even with hanging around das Fitnessstudio and making pancakes, as it was the only thing I could cook, we were still left with whole afternoons to fill.  Cue a care package that contained dinnerladies on DVD.  Each scene-stealing line delivery from Julie Walters would give us the resolve to carry on.  It was a lifeline in a world where our senses of humour didn’t translate into a language which has sixteen words for the.  Even back in Blighty years later, we found a production of dinnerladies on stage in Guildford and laughed ourselves silly reliving again the show and everything it had come to mean to us.

Let’s conclude on some melancholy.  With Victoria Wood dying just under two years ago, re-watching dinnerladies has taken on a more haunting quality.  Woven throughout the two series are frequent though unspecific references to canteen manager Tony’s cancer and treatment.  Bren, Wood’s character, supports him throughout, yet in reality, it’s Andrew Dunn we see remembering Wood fondly in the accompanying series Dinnerladies Diaries.  It has been pointed out before that the lyrics to the theme tune, again, written by Victoria herself, lamented the tragic running out of time that prevents many of us from realising our dreams.  Indeed, the will they, won’t they Brenda-Tony love story that was at the heart of the show brutally illustrated that life is for the grabbing, otherwise opportunities are for the missing.  True love isn’t glamorous Hollywood kisses.  It’s people with bad haircuts finally having a snog in a factory canteen.  It’s, you know, ridiculous: hilarious and tragic all at once.  It’s tragic that Victoria can never again give us new comedy, but it’s hilarious we can carry on enjoying what she left us, and that what she did leave us can mean so much.