This Country

Now that Just One More Episode is approaching 4,000 reads, it’s time to start acting like the major media platform that this has become.  Like all media, it needs to tap into current trends, desperately trying to second-guess what people want rather than staying true to any real values.  I’ve therefore decided people want to know about This Country, as this unassuming sitcom has come from nowhere to be the talk of the office.  Anyone who’s anyone is declaring for all and sundry to hear which episode they are up to, before entering into best line riff offs in order to prove their viewership.  And there was me, silently hoping nobody would ask me if I had ever seen it and force me to reveal I had never even heard of the show.  How had I missed this one?  I’m supposed to be a guiding light in the field of boxset navigation, and there was me, wondering why everyone was doing West Country accents and chuckling so much.

But how would I catch up quickly enough?  There are two series (with a third due next year) and I’d already spread myself very thinly with shows on Netflix and Amazon.  I spend weekends at friends’ weddings and weekdays avoiding grinding poverty by doing emails and that in a grown-up office.  When would I fit in another show?  Luckily, it’s a BBC production.  This means it’s on iPlayer.  iPlayer is an app on my phone.  I spend a lot of time on buses.  I normally read books on buses.  But I had run out of library books.  And due to the emails and that in the grown-up office, I’ve not snuck out to Camden Library at lunchtime (don’t tell them I live in Lambeth) to restock.  So I got organised and downloaded the first few episodes to watch at 6.15am on board my beloved 137 while it stops at Sacred Heart House to deposit old people who like to be out and about early.

This Country is like a cross between The Office and Nighty Night.  Regular readers of this blog will know that I love both, so it’s no surprise that I’m going to recommend This Country with some hearty emphasis.  Like The Office, it’s a mockumentary.  Like Nighty Night, the regional accents of the Cotswolds and beyond provide a lot of the comedy.  The documentary side of things is set up and contrived as a study into deprivation among the young in rural communities.  Statistics about issues in the countryside (such as loneliness, unemployment, lack of opportunities) flash up on screen accompanied by nothing more than birds tweeting.  The episode then sets about showing how this affects the mock element of the equation, rooted in the characters of the Mucklowe cousins.

First, there’s Kurtan Mucklowe.  His style goals seem to have been generated by The Office’s Gareth Keenan if the hair is anything to go by, but any similarities in his personality fade away as we get deeper into his character.  His maintenance of a close friendship with cousin Kerry is something Gareth would never have managed.  Kerry Mucklowe is exactly the type of girl you have seen while driving through regional towns, sauntering along a pavement in an unflattering football top and baggy trousers.  They come as a pair as there is nothing else to do in their village but hang out with each other, whether this is in a bus shelter, in the woods, Kerry’s mum’s kitchen or in Kerry’s brilliantly observed bedroom (nailing the tragedy of an adult inhabiting their childhood room).  Their dynamic adjusts throughout the series, with the role of the rational one switching between the two, though typically each is always as bad as the other.

Around them is a village cast with a right bunch of countryside characters.  There’s the well-meaning vicar whose patience they test.  There’s Mandy, a local hard-woman who’s not to be messed with.  There’s their pal Slugs who they actively try to avoid.  Kerry’s parents take the biscuit for the most gruesome creations.  Her dad avoids her around the village, prioritising his new family or, more accurately, himself, but this doesn’t stop Kerry dropping everything to play on his flight simulator with him.  Her mum never seems to leave her bedroom upstairs (“Kerry!”, “What?”), but this doesn’t stop her shouting down the stairs to join in any conversation she fancies.

There’s a bittersweetness to Kerry and Kurt.  We root for them, but they’re terrible people.  It’s not their fault, but they could make a bit more effort to get on.  They’ve got nothing going on for themselves, but somehow they’re charming and you love following them around with the camera crew.  They’re at their best when revealing embarrassing secrets about each other to the never-seen documentary makers, and below is a list of my top ten obscure references that revel in the show’s Britishness (or British experience of imported American culture) and the fact the characters of This Country actually live in the same country as us:

1. The Queen’s Nose
2. Computers for Schools vouchers
3. The leftover Bounties in a box of Celebrations
4. Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen
5. Emmerdale continuity errors
6. Dr Barnados
7. Throwing plums at someone’s house
8. Uncle Fester
9. Papa Roach
10. GiffGaff

I’d always thought my sister and I are pretty funny when we get together, but we’ve seemingly got nothing on Daisy May and Charlie Cooper, the sibling creators, writers and stars of This Country.  Not only have they brought us something deliciously entertaining and uniquely British, but they have crafted it to deliver just the right amount of acerbic punch to reflect the hopelessness of being a young person in rural Britain today.  Issues-based comedy?  Surely it’ll save this country.