Sally4ever

One of the most-read posts on Just One More Episode has been my piece on Nighty Night, a slightly obscure and incredibly offensive sitcom from fifteen years ago.  It remains one of my favourite shows of all time and its creator and star, Julia Davis, has long held hero status among a group of friends and me who live our lives by the teachings and best lines of this comedy.  Whenever Julia is involved in anything else, I am there.  She’s known for playing the perennial sourpuss Dawn Sutcliffe in Gavin & Stacey (whose recent Christmas special was the best thing about the festive season this year), while her 2016 series, Camping, pleased fans with its trademarks of Davis’s brand of comedy: inordinate social awkwardness caused by politeness forcing others to tolerate unacceptable behaviour and the sexually predatory jezebel.  I’ve also watched a series of Hunderby, a period black comedy that again explores many of the same tropes.  While the BBC was Nighty Night’s home, all subsequent vehicles have operated within the empire of Sky, and 2018’s Sally4ever is no exception.  Lacking a subscription during its debut and subsequent BAFTA win, I’ve only just caught up on my Julia Davis fix.  So, journey with me as we turn my ill-thought-out responses into another one of these posts.

Firstly, I’ve been able to assuage some of my Julia Davis withdrawals through the medium of podcast.  Dear Joan And Jericha sees Davis team up with Vicki Pepperdine (who steals the show in Camping) as a pair of local radio agony aunts responding to listeners’ letters about relationship and anatomy woes.  Rather than sympathy, they deal out female-hating judgement while criticising graphic accompanying photos and dispensing appalling advice.  All the while, their own ludicrous backstories are fleshed out, cementing the view that they are in no position to be telling anybody else what to do with their life.  Either way, its first series was a joyous listen (if you enjoy turning heads on the bus by laughing out loud uncontrollably) and the second delivered more of the same.  In fact, I was lucky enough (through work) to go to the launch party of the sophomore season.  So, er, yeah, I got to see Julia Davis in the flesh.  And by see, I mean stand as close as possible to her while my eyes bored into her face and she (hopefully) was unable to detect my fandom.  I was offered the chance to meet her (and two thirds of My Dad Wrote A Porno) but I don’t cope well with celebrities (see post on House Of Cards) so I scarpered off into the night, colliding with Cardinal Burns’ Seb Cardinal on the way out (more on this later).

With that distance from its creator, then, allow me to crack on with my unsolicited views.  Let’s organise them into the three best things about the show and then we can look at the three worst things.  It’s important to be balanced in your arguments, as we all learned doing our GCSE essays, alongside the holy rule of always read the question.

First best thing about it

Sally.  It’s not called Sally4ever for nothing.  Sally is played by Catherine Shepherd who you’ll recognise as one of Mark’s girlfriends from Peep Show.  As the programme’s name suggests, people get obsessed with Sally.  The funniest part is that it’s very difficult to see why.  Shepherd’s performance perfectly captures the mousey blandness of this sort of non-character, making everyone else’s fixations all the more alarming.  Her outfits are all impractical flowy cardigans and such.  She is terrible at thinking up reasons to say no to things, relying on “I’m really tired actually” or “I need the toilet” when it’s already too late.  It’s equally charming and infuriating.  Her ineffectiveness sees her in a loveless relationship with skin-crawling David (Alex Macqueen – Neil’s “gay” dad from The Inbetweeners and not his first collaboration with Davis) and his terrible bump, before getting inexplicably smitten by Davis’s own character, Emma.  Its Emma’s self-serving manipulation of Sally that propels us through the seven half-hour instalments, duly escalating beyond all repair thanks to Sally’s overruled protests.  She’s all of us lost in our thirties with out-of-control lives.

Second best thing about it

Felicity Montagu is here for another great character turn with Davis, this time as Elanor, the personification of the annoying office swot.  Using her mobility chair for sympathy and privilege, Elanor’s every line is a condescending drawl that will irk you senseless before you can muster the ability to start chuckling.  From her fluffy-topped stationery to her infatuation with Nigel (Julian Barratt as the office’s most desirable chap, and that’s scraping the barrel), she’s a joy to behold, particularly when she is aiming her wonderful passive-aggression at Sally, who can barely stick up for herself.

Third best thing about it

It’s Julia Davis all over.  If you loved Nighty Night, you’ll love this.  Because it’s nearly the same thing.  Which leads me on to the negatives.

First worst thing about it

It’s the same as Nighty Night.  Instead of Jill Tyrrell chasing Angus Deayton, you’ve got Emma ruining Sally’s life.  There’s the same gentle mocking of Christianity (easy target, though), obsession with toilet humour (especially poo), delusions of sexiness, cuckolded hideous lover and many other Davis-isms, right down to the self-entitlement around fancy hot drinks, graduating from Nighty Night’s “It would be nice if someone got me a cappuccino” to Sally4ever’s “I’m just waiting for that cortado.”  Don’t get me wrong, I’ll continue to campaign for Davis’s national treasure status.  As a fan of anything she does, I’ll celebrate that Sally4ever is similar to Nighty Night and lap up every moment, spurning more populist trash like The Apprentice and Gogglebox.  But that enjoyment is all sadly tinged with a slight concern that this is all we’ll ever get.  But, who am I to criticise?  I currently have zero successful sitcoms against my name, and just one unsuccessful blog, so I’ll try not to be some sort of angry internet troll.  I still lolled through most of Sally4ever.

Second worst thing about it

It does sort of bumble along.  Well, why shouldn’t it?  Let’s just leave Julia alone – she’s a goddess.  Episode one sets up all the business of Sally’s dreadful relationship with David, her terrible job and ineffective performance at it (under batsh*t boss Deborah) and initial encounter with the exotic sexy promise of Emma’s alternative lifestyle.  But then episode two is just more of this.  Luckily things pick up with the introduction in the third part of Sally’s old friends who invite the new couple to dinner, throwing into contrast Sally’s meandering approach to life against the settled-down-with-kids routine.  In conclusion, neither seem very happy.  Cast as the dissatisfied husband is Seb Cardinal (from paragraph two of this very blogpost).  Clearly having too much fun playing the dad who doesn’t want to grow up, his character is easily corrupted by Emma, culminating in her sliming into a film he’s directing with an ill-gotten background role.  What unfolds on set is toe-curling in its cringeability, but what happens in the trailer afterwards will have you question everything about this production.  Well done Seb, though.  He also coped really well with my fanboying over him when I bumped into him when leaving the podcast party.  “You’re Seb Cardinal,” I said, as if pointing out useful information, “I’m a massive fan.”  Cue awkward pause before he mentioned texting Julia about getting the access code for the party and I die inside about not being cool, talented and famous.  He had liked my tweet promoting my blogpost on Cardinal Burns that very week but going into that would have just been too painful, so I’ll write about it on the internet here instead.

Third worst thing about it

I have to be honest: I would love Julia Davis to have had a West Country accent in this.  Why not just be exactly like Nighty Night?  It’s basic of me to want this, and there are plenty of funny voices to go around in Sally4ever.  It’s my issue that all I want is a third series of Nighty Night and I’ll just have to live with that.

Anyway, let’s conclude by saying that Sally4ever is one for the fans, and everyone should be a fan of Julia Davis.  But not everyone can take the unique brand of humour.  If you don’t think it’s funny to watch a graphic lesbian sex scene (played for laughs, mind you) that culminates in a soiled sanitary product being flung across a room (with no hands) then maybe you should stay in your lane.  I’m here to celebrate a strong woman in comedy, known for her creativity with language (frothy might be one of her favourite words), her casting of wonderful actors (I’ve not even gone into Pepperdine’s classic turn as nonsense therapist, Belinda) and her ability to capture perfectly our paralysis by manners.  The next time someone’s mugging you off, have a word with yourself, or you’ll end up in a situation you can’t get out of.  JuliaDavis4ever.

Green Wing

This week, I’m returning to work after two weeks on holiday.  While being on vacation is moderately preferable to sitting in an office, I’m counting my blessings that I’m not going down some terrible coal mine or making thousands of flat whites as a barista.  Sitting and typing emails isn’t really that taxing, so I’ve no need to dread my return to corporate life.  But I’m sparing a thought for my friends that have trained in medicine.  I’ve heard many of their tales of junior doctor shifts, seen them uprooted across the country with each rotation and laughed and cried while reading Adam Kay’s This Is Going To Hurt.  Now the NHS is being smashed and grabbed over as befits the run-up to any British election.  On holiday in the US, my hotel TVs (in between impeachment proceedings) were filled with vile ads for various niche drugs and their side effects.  Which has all got me thinking about hospitals.  But, as we can’t take anything seriously here, we’re hitting up a fantastic comedy whose two seasons (starting back in 2004) have always made me smile: Green Wing.

I had planned to go through each of the main characters, but Wikipedia lists 13 of these, plus some key recurring roles, and I’m running out of time before Seven Worlds, One Planet.  So, instead, I’m going to pick out my favourites from the madcap population that staffs East Hampton Hospital.

Harriet Schulenberg

Played by Olivia Colman (who’s now sporting the crown in The, er, Crown) Harriet is a bastion of the HR department whose every day of attendance is a miracle in spite of her four kids and unhappy marriage, to say nothing of her actual performance when finally seated at her desk.  Colman perfectly captures the chaos that can ensue when lots of small, dirty children are involved: cardigans constantly slipping off, school projects being crafted while ferrying offspring around extra-curriculars.  I never cease to be impressed by the parents in my office who, after each day, raise little people in their homes while I just lie on the sofa, only to be kept up by these same precious mites when they have the sniffles or start vomiting.  Yet they often manage to come in the next day fully composed.  Harriet is so cleverly observed and amplified that she has a universal quality in reflecting the edge of madness where working parents exist.  It’s not all bad though: you can leave the office at any time just by saying you have to pick your kids up.  I often pop off, claiming to be fetching children from somewhere, and nobody is allowed to question me.  But, secretly, I don’t have any offspring.

Sue White

East Hampton’s staff liaison officer demonstrates demonic behaviour in every scene, whether alone in her office up to no good, or torturing the staff whose concerns she is meant to soothe.  This was another occasion when I fell in love with Michelle Gomez (last seen in Chilling Adventures Of Sabrina) who clearly enjoys the madcap glint in her eye she is able to maintain throughout.  Of note is her ability to prevent all protest at her treatment of others, relying on British politeness and surprise at ill-behaviour in a way that’s similar to my hero, Jill Tyrell, in Nighty Night.

Guy Secretan

Stephen Mangan now performs 99% of all TV advert voiceover work, but his performance of the supercilious anaesthesiologist, always second fiddle to the much cooler Mac, made him a household favourite.  Every workplace needs a gaffman, and Dr Guy Secretan’s belief in his own half-Swiss importance can outgaff the gaffiest of them.

Caroline Todd

The newcomer through whom we navigate the sketch-show-esque world of East Hampton, Caroline is our everyman at an asylum full of medical professionals.  While she’s as neurotic as the rest of us, her foibles pale in comparison to those around her.  You can’t help but love Tamsin Greig throughout, even when she is having a strong adverse reaction to Angela Hunter.  There’s a GIF of Caroline typing wildly that I still use in work presentations most weeks, so she’s a gift (a GIF-t – get it?) that keeps on giving.

Angela Hunter

Sarah Alexander again nearly flies under the radar here (a perennially underappreciated national treasure of comedy acting), but this character is always one of the most enjoyable.  Excessively cheery and seemingly perfect, her colleagues’ response to her is always reassuring, including Caroline Todd’s irrational dislike.

Joanna Clore

I could go through the whole of the HR department here, but my final mention is for its head, played by Pippa Haywood.  A woman of a certain age, she doesn’t care what others might make of her brusque attitude and major mood swings.  You can’t beat an angry senior woman at work.  Senior men rightly cower from them leaving everyone else the chance to get on with stuff.

There are too many more to mention.  Even the deliciously named Martin Dear hasn’t made my list (despite his name encapsulating everything about his character perfectly).  I’ll stop once to mention Alan Statham though.  I have to confess that he was my least favourite and I never looked forward to his scenes coming around.  He is just so snivelling and conniving that my skin crawls every time I even think of him.  But one out of 13 ain’t bad, especially as there’s a great deal else to love about this sketch show-cum-sitcom-cum-comedy drama-cum-hospital show.  And that’s a lot of cums in this genre-splicing format.  Green Wing will forever remain welcome in our homes – we just need a political party to pledge in their manifesto that they are committed to bringing it back (and not shafting the actual NHS).

Toast Of London

Apropos of nothing, this week I shall be peeling back the skin of Toast Of London, taking a look at what lies beneath and maybe even sniffing it.  I say apropos of nothing, as I cannot link this week’s choice to anything happening in wider popular culture (plus the wankiness of the term suits the pretension of the programme in question).  Toast Of London’s three series came out between 2012 and 2015, yet my stumbling across them on Netflix in recent times and harnessing the gentle mirth and subversive lampooning of the luvvies that dominate British acting as my accompanying background viewing to Sunday evenings’ food prep marathon (step one: peel sweet potatoes, step two: accept the weekend is over) is particular only to me.  Yet that has never stopped me doing anything on this blog – in fact, regular readers will know it revolves more around me than it does around actually providing useful boxset recommendations.  That said, I have been craving more of Matt Berry since I made my way through The IT Crowd.  My need for his incredible voice was partly fulfilled by old episodes of The Adam Buxton Podcast (that’s right, I also voraciously consume content in podcast form – the eagle-eared among you may even have noticed a quotation from Russell Brand’s Under The Skin in this very introduction), but a vehicle of his own would surely hit the spot.

Fans of silliness will be well rewarded, though the brand of silliness is more conceptual than you might find in my other favourite silly sitcom, Miranda.  Toast is a London-based actor who isn’t that successful.  He gets enough degrading voiceover work to keep going, he has potentially been a household name during a previous decade’s heyday, but he still needs to badger his agent for work while she too badgers him to take up unsuitable jobs.  Like Andy Millman in Extras, he exhibits seething jealousy for any member of his acting cohort who is doing better than him.  The best thing about all of these minor actors is their surnames.  Toast in itself is enough to stop any top billing sounding too serious, conjuring up images of melting butter spread with crumb-covered knives.  Surpassing that English word for banal naffness is the name of Toast’s greatest rival, Ray “Bloody” Purchase.  Purchase is such a wet sock of a word and of a name.  Neither glamorous, nor familiar, it’s a simple monetary transaction for a good or service.  Starring Ray Purchase and Steven Toast isn’t what you want to hear about any blockbuster film.  Nor will you.  Purchase turns up on almost every job of Toast’s, outdoing him through chumminess with difficult prima donna directors or getting on better with smirkingly smug mugs of voiceover booth technicians.

Both take their craft seriously, but the comedy comes from showing how amateur and ham they really are.  Even Toast’s natural flair as a high winds actor (shouting in front of large fans) doesn’t bode well for future jobs, as whatever can go wrong does.  Helping to expose the evil of taking acting too seriously is a supporting cast with names as delicious as Toast’s and Purchase’s.  There’s Ken Suggestion, Duncan Clench, Cliff Bonanza, Jenny Spasm and Max Gland, not to mention a further raft of names who are only ever referred to such as Warren Organ and Sookie Houseboat.  Each belongs beneath a signed black-and-white headshot in a regional curry house.  Most beloved for me, though, is Toast’s agent, Jane Plough (pronounced Pluff).  Played by Doon Mackichan (whom I’ve always loved since Smack The Pony and I once smiled at on a train), Plough makes grandiose statements about never opening the attachments on emails (amen) and is often seen calling her client from completely unexplained sexual scenarios involving scantily clad young men and some dessert options.

Self-importance is easily made ridiculous, but we all end up on Team Toast, rooting for him to catch a break, despite him being a misogynist pig who only cares about himself.  He is aghast at current trends and longs for his younger years galivanting around Soho when he was a youthful upstart, rather than having to cope with the sniggers his voiceover recordings invariably draw.  Sending up how the British revere their stage and screen actors might seem like easy prey, but Toast Of London’s silliness has a caustic edge, an absurd narrative and a surrealist approach to almost every scene.  You’ll feel delicious every time you hear that immortal line: “Hello Steven, it’s Clem Fandango here.  Can you hear me?”  And so, apropos of nothing, let’s have another series please.

Naked Attraction

In the last few days I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been asked if I watch Naked Attraction.  It’s a bold question for anyone to pose in an office, as it comes pre-packaged with an assumption that the asker is proudly declaring their love for nudity-based programming, displaying an unashamed love for looking at other people’s bits and pieces from the privacy and comfort of their own living room.  I can answer that question now: I don’t watch Naked Attraction.  But that doesn’t stop me going on about it here.  Besides, when I say I don’t watch it, this means I don’t make an appointment to view the onscreen wobbly bodies.  It means I don’t make a point of downloading missed episodes on a catch-up service.  But sure, I’ve flicked through the channels of a late evening and found myself transfixed by a good fifteen to twenty minutes of crotch-first dating, so we can all rest assured that I have definitely qualified myself to comment.

For those that don’t know, Naked Attraction is a dating show that gets right down to business.  Our singleton is presented with six potential partners, obscured from their view by coloured screens.  As you would have guessed from its title, there is nudity.  But while our chooser is fully clothed, those that are submitting themselves for selection or rejection have taken off their vest and pants beforehand and are awaiting judgment in the altogether.  Bit by literal bit, the screens reveal the bodies behind, but we start below the waist, only factoring the face into things at a final stage.  After each round, one contestant is cruelly purged, judged to have the wrong genitalia and the game goes on.  The action culminates in the chooser disrobing for the final decision, joining in all the bare-arsery, putting the cock (or pea) in peacocking with visible relish at the thought of finally making everyone else look at their junk.

Regular readers will know I love a boundary-pushing format, but I just can’t get the commissioning meeting for this one out of my head.  It’s one thing to greenlight a naked dating show – Britain could do with taking a more European approach to nudity (shrugging with disinterest rather than pointing and laughing), but the fact that this goes beyond unclothed coupling up and pivots on the first impressions people’s external sex organs make on each other must have made for an interesting PowerPoint presentation.  “So, the entrants look at each other naked and we see if sparks fly?” is what I presume the Channel 4 commissioner asked.  “Not quite,” must have come the response, “one contestant looks only at the other’s privates in order to determine if they are a suitable life partner.”

I suppose it gets any awkwardness out of the way that may come up later down the line.  Nobody wants to have wasted three evenings of their life in various Pizza Express branches before finally getting down to consensual rumpy pumpy, only to find that what lies beneath falls short of expectations.  Why not be upfront about what you want?  Judith from series five (yes, five) certainly has been, and this is what has got our prudish British tongues a-wagging.  Asked for her ideal man, she was candid in her prerequisite of eight to eleven inches.  And fair play to her – it’s not the Dark Ages so we’ve no right to sneer at an older church-going lady who likes to accommodate well-endowed chaps.  Finding out these details is the wonderful Anna Richardson, mastering the hosting art of not looking at the choosing contestants’ crotches in each final round, probably because so many eyefuls are forced upon her beforehand, eagerly examining each mons and foreskin with that week’s date-seeking hopeful.  I imagine she has ensured the clauses in her contract stipulating no obligation for her to join in with the naturism are clad in iron.

Why shouldn’t real bodies get more airtime on TV?  Naked Attraction has been applauded for its inclusiveness, with every shape, size and hue of human mixed in among the skin-showing.  Where it finds contestants willing to undergo such scrutiny is anyone’s guess.  It would be impossible to avoid any awkwardness, especially as the scrutinees can’t speak until later rounds, resulting in people trying to answer questions with eye-level hip shimmies until you can almost hear the pubic hair rustling.  My favourite delicate moment is when the chooser meets the rejected contenders.  It answers the question to which humankind has long pondered the answer: how do you hug someone when one of you is naked?  The solution: the crotch-back hug.  Participants lean in from a slightly more distant stance than they would normally, sticking their bottoms back a little more lest bare flaccid willy graze someone’s jeans.

The toe-curling is actually strongest once the clothes are back on and we witness the final pairing’s first date, reassuringly conducted in a well-lit public space in case anyone tries to slip their slip off again and parade around desperately seeking attention.  The matches rarely work out, despite both having the unhinged glint in their eye that they are perfectly willing to take part in a national television show whose main premise is the detailed scrutiny of their reproductive organs.  Watch it at your own peril and talk about it at work while running a similar risk that everyone thinks you’re a titspervert.  But let’s shed our inhibitions like candidates shed their underpants and knickers.  If they’re happy living free of shame that their scrotum is extra dangly or that their labia are unique, then you can be free of shame that you spend your evenings looking at them.

Keeping Up Appearances

This blog was going to be so cool and edgy.  I was going to uncover hidden gems on obscure platforms, curating them for readers’ viewing pleasure like some sort of Walter Presents, only with more hair and no glasses.  Highbrow people would come to me wondering what to watch.  This was clearly never going to happen for two reasons: firstly, I watch too much trash.  I’ve covered all the dross on here, from Geordie Shore to Ex On The Beach (broadly the same show) via Love Island and Bromans (which I still remember fondly yet it curiously doesn’t seem to be appearing for a second series).  Secondly, there aren’t enough hours in the day to get through all the TV.  I’m fairly vocal with anyone who’ll ask (nobody asks) that I have to be in bed by 10pm, which leaves a maximum of two telly-viewing hours of a weekday evening when I’ve dragged my heavily sweating body home from the office via a Tube, a bus and a quick walk.  With so many subsequent series of things like Peaky Blinders and Great British Bake Off taking up my schedule, my chances to uncover and share any gems, trashy or otherwise are limited.

So we’re back raiding the archives this week.  And what an old archive I’ve raided as I’ve gone all the way back to a sitcom that ran from 1990 to 1995.  I think I was searching for Cardinal Burns clips on YouTube for a previous unpopular post when I suddenly started getting served montages of this show, all in aid of promoting BritBox – seems to be some sort of platform for watching exactly the sort of old stuff I’m talking about this week.  Cunningly, though, another motivation to cover this is that aged British comedy that only just predates the internet gets the most reads.  Not straightaway, but I think eventually the searchbots crawl in and I end up being a leading authority on such classics as Bo’ Selecta! – now the most read post out of everything on Just One More Episode despite the clamouring apathy that greeted its initial publication.

And here we are, then, talking about Keeping Up Appearances.  Let’s begin with Patricia Routledge, a national treasure if ever there was one.  She had already proven she could hold her own, fully alone, in the outstanding Kitty monologues that featured in Victoria Wood’s As Seen On TV (something I immediately binged through when I spotted it on Netflix, but given my sycophantic piece on dinnerladies, I’ve saved posting about until another time).  As Hyacinth Bucket, she was given a wider world to expand into with her trademark impeccable character portrayal – not that any single line of Kitty’s lacked a complete visual rendering in the mind’s eye.

Hyacinth likes to keep up her appearances.  This is because her origins are distinctly lower class, so having scraped into the bottom rung of the middle class by acquiring a three-piece suite and (obsessively) cleaning her well-twitched net curtains, she exhibits the excruciatingly British trait of being agonisingly class-conscious.  Throughout the five series, she denies any association with her sisters: slovenly yet lovely Daisy and glorious maneater Rose, not to mention Daisy’s other half, Onslow, king of the slobs, played by the fondly remembered Geoffrey Hughes (also known as Twiggy in The Royle Family).  I’ll be honest though: as a Surrey schoolboy whose own parents’, shall we say, self-improvement naturally led to an element of snobbery, I was as appalled by Hyacinth’s family as she was.

In fact, as a child between the ages of five and ten when the show first broadcast, I couldn’t for a long time see what the joke was with our Hyacinth.  She had high standards, liked nice things and always wanted the best to happen – what wasn’t to like?  Her phone manner was clearly over the top, “The [bouquet] household; the lady of the house speaking,” but her candlelight suppers sounded like a hot invitation and she was always immaculately turned out (unless she had a tipple, in which case she became immediately dishevelled).  I could never understand why her neighbours, Elizabeth and Emmett, got so nervous about seeing her, though their anxiety rubbed off on me as I was always terrified of the impending moment one of them would be left with no choice but to smash their teacup on the floor in response to Hyacinth’s outbursts.  In conclusion, I really just thought this was a show about a nice lady, with lots of unexplained canned laughter.

Granted, despite the academic heights I later reached, some of the cleverer jokes were beyond me.  Whenever she quickly spelled her surname as B-U-C-K-E-T while insisting it be pronounced bouquet, I really had no idea what was going on, unable to match the spoken letters quickly enough to form the joke – all this despite the letters and spellings questions in University Challenge later being my top scorers.  Another regular recurring joke revolved around her phone number resembling that of a Chinese takeaway, which teed up many euphemisms about the availability of crispy prawn balls at the Bucket residence (low) due to misdials.  My own parents firmly believed that takeaways were for emergencies only and a clear sign of idleness on any other occasion.  To this day, I don’t use Deliveroo or Uber Eats, which does save me money and demonstrates a clear benefit to all the emotional scarring we’re unearthing here.  But this meant I had no idea that you used dish numbers when phoning a Chinese takeaway so I simply patiently waited for these scenes to end, safe in the knowledge something silly would happen eventually.  I remember we did once get a Domino’s as a family for some sort of treat, but this was of course served on our own crockery, with folded paper napkins, just in case anyone looked in through the window and thought we had a low household income.

Suffering through all of this we had Hyacinth’s husband Richard (a name she pronounced so wonderfully I can hear it ringing in my ears).  While driving, he would be told to mind the pedestrian, while gardening, he would be told to look like he was enjoying himself, lest people think a gardener beyond their budget, while rushing around at Hyacinth’s beck and call, she would hope he wouldn’t spoil things with lower middle-class humour.  Let’s face it, the man probably had clinical depression, which, added to her neighbours’ crippling anxiety, was just part of the show’s scathing social commentary around British snobbery.

Indeed, in real life, as a Daily Mail reader and probable Brexit voter, Hyacinth would be my natural enemy.  It’s hard to say how well the show has dated, but more valuable are my fond memories of crashing down the stairs to join my family in watching each episode in the early nineties.  This was all thanks to Routledge’s ability to create charm where there should be none.  Every line is a masterclass in delivery.  Every delivery is a masterclass in character.  Hyacinth Bucket remains as relevant as she ever was so we shall give her the last word, and the lifelong snob in me can’t help but agree with her sentiment: “If there's one thing I can't stand, it's snobbery and one-upmanship. People trying to pretend they're superior. Makes it so much harder for those of us who really are.”

Derry Girls

“Oh, you should watch Derry Girls,” everyone said, “It’s so funny.”  Well, I did.  And it is.  My fame as a TV blogger has been spreading far and wide, resulting in an inundation of recommendations for things I should watch and write about.  A lot of the time I nod and smile, wondering if people realise these posts are more about me than any of the programmes in question, but the input is mostly welcome.  Like any normal person, I don’t always know which boxsets won’t let me down.  Peer-to-peer word of mouth comes in very handy.  I had totally missed the first series of Derry Girls when it premiered back in early 2018, and I still hadn’t sorted myself out in time for the second in March 2019.  If I’m honest, I don’t like watching things on Channel 4 that much.  It’s because I’m exposed to trails for their other shows and want to watch almost everything else, and we can all see that I already spend far too much time with telly.

Nevertheless, the first series is on Netflix, while I was able to catch up on the second with Channel 4 On Demand.  I don’t know if it’s called All4 anymore, or if it went back to 4oD, or maybe it’s Catchy Uppy or something (and I should know really, given my job), but I do know they don’t frequency cap their ads on there.  I’ve seen the same McDonald’s spots upwards of ten times, yet I’m still unswerving from my lifelong vow never to consume food from that hellhole.  Their agency has literally wasted them around 5p on me.  The good news is, after all the award wins, Derry Girls will be back for a third series.  Let’s unpick what has made it so successful.

Silly Accents

For those that don’t know, Derry is in Northern Ireland, so most of the dialogue is in the famous local accent and dialect where “how now brown cow?” becomes “hurr nurr brurn curr?” though I was disappointed that my favourite ever Northern Irish word didn’t make an appearance: a friend from the same town grew up thinking that passing wind was called doing a roodie doodie (say it out loud in your best Northern Irish accent) until he, as an adult, realised it was actually just his family that did that.  Either way, I commented in my post on Nighty Night how the right accent can make everything seem funny.  Add a good old “so it is” on the end of each sentence and this Celtic turn compounds the effect even further.

Nostalgia

We’re not just in Derry, we’re in Derry in the 1990s.  Mobile phones weren’t yet a thing, PJ & Duncan hadn’t become Ant and Dec and double denim was still on its first time around.  Derry Girls plants you unmistakably in the decade, not just through the hair and fashion and (lack of) tech, but through a soundtrack that surprises and delights the viewer at every turn.  That’s if you’re old enough to remember.  If you’re not, then get out.  But who would have thought that Gina G’s Ooh Aah… Just A Little Bit would still sound like such a banger?  I’m sitting here with a Spotify playlist lifted directly from the show, wondering how on earth I bring about some sort of personal Ace of Base reunion tour.

The Hilarity of Sectarian Violence

The Troubles, at least to a Surrey schoolboy, always seemed a bit far off and endless – the kind of thing you tune out as it’s a bit overexposed: a bit like climate change, Brexit or Boris Johnson.  While teenage life is full of frustrations (see the post on The Inbetweeners), I can’t imagine the further paralysing effect of growing up in the midst of a conflict that claimed over 3,000 lives.  Our Derry Girls are of the Catholic persuasion (allowing easier pickings for jokes about priests, nuns and the Pope) but any real antipathy towards protestants is reserved for their parents and grandparents.  A protestant boy is as good a ride as any, at least according to Michelle.  If you’re not familiar with the Troubles, though, you can look forward to the whole thing being reignited for an unnecessary sequel, courtesy of our good pal Brexit.

Outstanding Characters

You’ll come to love the Derry Girls (and boy) but it’s Michelle that has all the best lines: “You can’t ring Childline every time your mother threatens to kill you.”  Her scrunchy perm and hoop earrings are mere accessories to her pursuit of the best craic no matter the consequences.  Cousin Orla, meanwhile, clinches it for the best individual accent, aided by the strangeness of her every utterance.  Our lead, Erin Quinn, has amazing timing, but her mouth never stops moving, while Clare spends most of each episode shrieking.  It’s actually the supporting cast I enjoy the most.  School swot, Jenny Joyce, is an instant favourite, with her delicious unstoppable smugness at every turn wonderfully foiled by Sister Michael’s utter disgust at her sycophancy.  Jenny’s assembly harmonies show a voice as weak as her two shoes are goodie.

But Erin and Orla’s family deliver the most laughs.  We’ve all been cornered by an Uncle Colm – a relation whose unending stories guarantee instant boredom.  We all know someone as self-centred as Aunt Sarah – the kind of person who wears white to a wedding.  And we all love a matriarch as domineering as Mary.  Erin’s mum truly is a domestic force to be reckoned with, often ending up an unwilling accomplice in the girls’ ill-advised misdemeanours.  She captures some major universal mum-isms that can be recognised among the Irish, the British and the world over.  She gets the names of new things wrong, mistakenly thinking that Take That are called This And That.  And she has strong sentiments about laundry, flying off the handle when someone suggests doing just a half load of washing because doing “A half load goes against everything I stand for.”  My own mother once matched this when I asked her innocently why she preferred Sainsbury’s over Tesco, to which she responded instantly, “I just hate everything Tesco stand for as a company.”  Fairly neutral then.

So, well done to Lisa McGee, the show’s writer and creator.  She’s added something to the national canon that’s so nuanced and local that I’m thrilled at the thought of other English-speaking countries struggling to work out what on earth is going in each episode.  Maybe someone’s told them they should watch Derry Girls because it’s so funny.  But they can’t.  It’s ours.

The Royle Family

After so many posts harping on about national treasures in the world of telly (Fleabag, Nighty Night, Chewing Gum), I’m prompted this week to consider the national treasures we have lost.  British summer seems at last to have remembered that it’s June and, judging by my back sweat as I sit on this Sunday morning train home to London from an idyllic seaside wedding in Kent, this better weather may indeed seem at odds with the somewhat hibernal nature of the show in the title of this week’s offering.  But indulge me the lack of seasonality; we’ve covered nearly a hundred shows here so perfect alignment to the cultural calendar isn’t always possible or interesting (to me).  In fact, continuing with the theme of writing more about myself than the shows in question, it’s the loss of a personal treasure that has influenced me here.  But don’t worry: it would be fairly uncharacteristic of me to display genuine emotion, so you’ll just need to bear with me as I segue clunkily from a death in the family to irreverent commentary on a sitcom from a few years back.  I mean, yes, even that sentence was clunky, wasn’t it?

We’ll start with the theme tune.  For us in our late twenties and early thirties, Oasis sound-tracked our coming of age.  In fact, last night’s wedding culminated in the bride and groom held aloft on the shoulders of pals, Don’t Look Back In Anger blaring out from the booth of a DJ only slightly disgruntled that a drunken pal had spilled drinks on one of his lights (which he then mopped up with a cushion) and with raucously caterwauled backing vocals provided by a choir of prosecco-fuelled Millennials playing at being adults, a moment as aspirationally instagrammable as it was beautiful in real life.  But beyond this band’s best-known hits, Half The World Away sticks out, not for being any less anthemic, but for its subtle pain teamed with muted comfort.  And thus, Noel Gallagher’s voice brings us each episode into the world of the Royles of Manchester.

I am bound to confess that my household missed out on The Royle Family during its initial broadcasts on BBC2 in 1998.  As northern as gravy on everything, the show failed to appeal to my southern clan’s Surrey ways.  These people were unemployed, so what interest could we have in their lives?  While their working classness was there to be celebrated, my parents had striven all their lives to project middle class temperaments at every encounter: for example, I wasn’t supposed to watch Grange Hill in case I picked up on their examples of poor speech.  It was only during my year abroad that a dear friend sourced and shared the DVDs.  I’ve previously talked of how, at the time, daily viewings of dinnerladies provided an essential link back to Blighty (before it was an embarrassing place to be from when in Europe), but once we had completed both series, it was The Royle Family that stepped up to offer us respite from all the Vollkornbrot posturing and Umsteigemöglichkeiten announcements.

Our premise is a family sitting on their sofas watching TV.  In many ways, then, an accurate reflection of my own family’s time spent together.  But while we literally ate crumpets for Sunday tea while watching (and bloody loving) Just William, the Royles seem to sit around watching any old thing.  But unlike the showing off of Gogglebox, these viewers’ charm came from their subtlety.  Instead of sweeping statements for shock value, or trying to look good with a pre-practised opinion, the Royles gave us a rawer realism, a more honest reflection of life on the British settee: flatulence, bickering about who makes the tea, gossiping about neighbours and selfish channel-hopping.  Yet, through that, the affection was irresistible, and its identifiability therefore transcended all factors of class and region.

The highs and lows, and the overall below averageness of the Royles made us fall in love with them, accepting them and all their unwashed clothing, nose-picking and toilet talk.  Patriarch Jim of course had the best seat in the house, selected for its unbeatable view of the small screen: a policy repeated in lounges the country over.  Meanwhile, at his side, Sue Johnston’s scrunchy-wearing Barbara perfectly captured that classic mum behaviour of getting very tired after doing what always seemed like not very much (at least to us as kids – I now know that all adult life is peerlessly exhausting), reclining deep in the sofa’s cushioning, her neck barely supporting the weight of her own head, while making sure every visitor had had their tea.  Coming and going was awkward teen our Antony, sent unfairly to the shop for any errand, before growing into a driven young man, much to the surprise of his own parents.

Propelling gentle plots forwards was eldest daughter Denise, played by the show’s creator and writer, national treasure Caroline Aherne.  Her relationship with, then engagement to long-term collaborator Craig Cash as Dave, who goes on to become her husband and the father of her children, generated the drama, if any.  From their spats to the eventual wedding, and in particular, the birth of their first child, crescendoing in a post-broken waters bathroom scene between father and daughter that I esteem to be one of the most accurate portrayals of British parental love ever committed to TV (much like Tim and Dawn’s romance in The Office is the most accurate portrayal of romantic love).  Fair enough, Denise does go on to display a lean-back approach to parenting and later claims that Christmas isn’t really for kids, but you wouldn’t expect much else from someone whose idea of dinner is Dairylea on toast.  And, more importantly, Baby David (or, rather, Dabry Babid) joins a family that love him no matter what.

Sadly, we lost Aherne in 2016.  From her first appearances in The Fast Show, declaring the weather to be scorchio or commenting on customers’ shopping as a garrulous checkout girl, her contribution to national comedy celebrated with laser-sharp observation the silliest things about us.  In addition, The Royle Family featured another lost national treasure.  Liz Smith inhabited the role of Nana Royle as comfortably as she sank into the cushions of her family’s well-used and well-worn sofa, a crafty foil to son-in-law Jim, but a source of grandmaternal comfort to all who sat beside her in that front room.  I could bawl now just thinking of the episode where Nana Royle passes away.  The loss was so touching in its normality that it felt all the more painful.  Understandably, the nation mourned again when Smith retired from the comedy of life at the age of 95, also in 2016.

And so, back to me, everybody.  A matter of days short of ninety, my mum’s last, yet much older, sister died peacefully in hospital.  She hadn’t been out of her nursing home bed in six years and never had any teeth in the whole 34 years during which I had the pleasure of knowing her, yet she was always cheerful and would never say no to a Jelly Baby (in fact, she would actively request them).  Steering clear of an excessive bout of sentiment, I won’t dwell on the grief of losing a personal treasure.  For the first time, I no longer have an elderly relative who needs visiting in an old people’s home, which means my sister and I will have to give up one of our favourite hobbies: speculating on the origins of brown stains on the ceilings (my sister: “that’s not coffee”).  This blog isn’t going to make a huge contribution to how we process grief, but whether it’s your Auntie Yvonne or Nana Royle, cherishing happy memories will always bring more than lamenting loss.  I don’t have a sitcom I can re-watch to reconnect with my aunt as I can with Aherne and Smith, but I can replay recollections of her telling me I had grown bigger, despite me being over 30.  And the smile that brings will have to be enough.

This Time With Alan Partridge

I’ve been doing something a bit naughty recently.  I’ve been snorting on packed trains in various failed attempts to stem my chuckling at different comedy shows, holding my poxy iPhone (battery life of 20 minutes max) a hair’s breadth from my nose while peering into its fractured screen and the hilarity within (unless the sun is streaming through the window directly onto it, in which case I can’t see anything).  I’ve been doing this with Fleabag, but there’s a second prime piece of iPlayer content that’s been causing me to snigger into my keep-cup coffee on the painful Southern service to Angmering (where I’ve been spending weekends learning how to Sunday roast in my parents’ kitchen (not a euphemism)): This Time With Alan Partridge.  There was a lady next to me on the return jaunt to Clapham Junction who I caused to jolt awake with my rampant tittering at Partridge’s antics, but luckily that wasn’t the most annoying thing I did to her as I did also accidentally drop my whole jacket on her head when trying to get it out of the overhead rack without exposing too much of my soft, soft tummy flesh while reaching overhead.  So, why has this show been causing me to do so many laughs?

Firstly, let’s look at the character himself, as Alan’s been with us since 1991.  We’ll need to take this post as me ticking off sideswiping at all of his previous output, from Knowing Me Knowing You With Alan Partridge to I’m Alan Partridge.  Played so ably by Steve Coogan, Partridge’s character frontier has blurred into most performances by his co-creator, but this is more down to my tiny mind’s lack of capacity rather than Coogan’s abilities.  He still kills it in The Other Guys (watch now for immediate LOLs) and has a great time in Hamlet 2 (definitely a real film and definitely enjoyable).  Back in the nineties, Partridge parodied the kind of vile, middle-class, jingoistic, chauvinist chap who lounged across many of TV’s chat sofas, exaggerating delusions of grandeur and self-righteousness to comedic success.  But, in a subversive twist, as with House Of Cards, real life has plumbed depths deeper than writers’ darkest imagining of our dystopian day-to-day lives.  2019 is home to broadcasting men who shouldn’t be listened to whilst raving wildly in bus shelters with their trousers round their ankles, let alone telling people what to think about driving cars while wearing bad jeans (Jeremy Clarkson) or still on telly trolling minority groups after publishing fake Iraqi prisoner abuse photos in a national newspaper (Piers Morgan).

This blog isn’t really a place where I want to attack people, but Piers Morgan isn’t people: a slathering antique whose chinly ambiguity is surpassed only by the variation in distances between his beady eyes.  I firmly believe that there is a fourth type of matter in the universe in addition to solid, liquid and gas, and this is Piers Morgan’s chin.  What even is it?  Before I get worked up, I should land my point: in comparison, Partridge suddenly seems harmless, with just enough charm that you sympathise with his terrible ambition but not too much pathos that you can’t laugh your head off when it all inevitably goes wrong for him.

Secondly, then, This Time apes a much-loved staple of teatime telly so well that we really do need to ask ourselves some tough questions as a nation: why do people tolerate mindless twaddle like The One Show?  It’s just so broad that it’s dripping in blandness.  It’s nice enough, but, for a bastard like me, being nice is not enough.  The moment I hear the opening note of the theme tune, I get shivers down my spine.  Surely there is more to life.  I remember a family holiday to Menorca when my niece was still crawling.  My dad’s first priority when entering any room is to turn the TV on (guess where my love of telly comes from) and villas on Mediterranean holiday are islands are no exception to this rule.  There we were, free of the banality of UK weekday life, ready to kick back and relax, escaping the drizzle, when suddenly: “Ooooooone, do-do-do-do-do-do, ooooooone, do-do-do-do-do-do…”  We had come all this way, only to be subjected to VTs about dog-walking in Wales and a live interview with someone who once did something underwhelming.  I immediately jumped in the pool.  The only good thing to come of it is that my toddler niece learned to blow raspberries in tune to the music, demonstrating a precocious skillset in recognising tosh and, also, the performing arts.

A former flatmate of mine used to work on the production team, going out around the UK making VTs.  I was able to ask him who the people were behind the cameras sneering and jeering at the hosts, like some sort of rent-an-audience designed to make The One Show feel like more of an impromptu spectacle than a settee-based conversation slowly dying in front of a floor-to-ceiling window.  Often, on his way out the door after a day’s editing of features on Britain’s favourite paving slab, he would be intercepted by a manager, innocently asking why he wasn’t hanging around to watch the live show.  He’d then lose his evening to providing the in-studio atmosphere, understandably reluctant to stay late as you would be in any job, though instead of finishing a deck or bashing out emails, he was forced to pretend to enjoy The One Show, possibly seeing a Hollywood A-lister asked for their views on the sexualisation of pre-pubescent girls or witnessing a politician being pushed to provide a response to the question: what is your favourite owl?

At this point, I should probably mention This Time With Alan Partridge in some shape or form.  The premise is that there exists a live BBC magazine-format show (This Time) which desperately needs a step-in male host.  Cue the With Alan Partridge bit.  As viewers, we therefore revel in the live links as they are filmed, the downtime in the studio as they play out and some of the actual VTs themselves.  Alan is true to form, desperate to go to any length to make his appointment permanent, drawing the limelight back to his terrible chat but then getting annoyed when his moments to shine drown in misjudgement, mediocrity or disaster.  Not only is the fake show stolen from Partridge, but the actual televisual format this post is about is also stolen.  Susannah Fielding plays Jennie Gresham, the existing host who must slide up the sofa felt to make way for Partridge’s man-spread legs and scotch egg breath.  She goes beyond being spot on in convincing us she is a real host, arriving at some kind of comedy peak where her shocked responses and professional cover ups merit more praise than I can conjure with my by-comparison shoddy prose.

As ever, a warm welcome is extended by me to Felicity Montagu (loved for her work in Nighty Night) as Partridge’s suffering-addicted assistant, Lynn.  She shuffles onto set when the cameras are off, seeing to Partridge’s refreshment needs (“Glass of water!”) or to slut-shame Jennie Gresham passively aggressively in relation to her choice of blouse.  More Lynn would really only improve things, but there’s a steady stream of guests and contributors who bring vitality to the comedy, from Ruth Duggan’s refusal to agree with anything Partridge says, to Simon Denton’s inability to make his giant interactive social media screen work properly (which is gratifying in itself given that no programme ever has been improved by the inclusion of a tweet expressing the opinion of Dave from High Wycombe).

Despite all the praise I’ve heaped here, though, the main office conversation around This Time With Alan Partridge concerns itself with mixed reviews, dwindling audiences and no recommissioning (an ironic situation for Alan).  To borrow some of his own self-assurance, I would conclude that anyone that doesn’t get the humour in this Partridge vehicle is completely stupid.  The awkward flow is all part of the concept, with every second orchestrated to enhance its own ridiculousness.  If you can’t bear the cringe with each unexpected silence, then, by all means, watch the actual One Show, or Good Morning Britain with Piers Morgan, because you’ve truly found your level.  Meanwhile, I’ll go back to ruining public transport with my content consumption, which has now expanded beyond overloud staccato laughter while viewing the iPlayer into brandishing the dodgy cover photography of I, Partridge: We Need To Talk About Alan while I indulge in reading Partridge’s autobiography on the Tube.