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.
