Vanity Fair proves haunting
Sometimes things come back to haunt you. For me, it was being forced to read Vanity Fair in the sixth form. It was a set text. I was scarred for life. Back then I’d only read
Biggles, The Hobbit and Peyton Place, beneath the sheets, but Thackeray.
I’ve avoided Vanity Fair ever since, so my moment of truth came this week. I could either watch the TV series or switch channels. I did both. There was a strange parallel between Becky Sharp and 10 million Brits who migrate to the Costa del Sol every summer.
But back to Vanity Fair (TV One, Sundays). Becky’s a smart, penniless young lady who wants to better herself after leaving Miss Pinkerton’s finishing school. It’s all about position in society. She doesn’t want to sleep her way to the bottom, so she engages with upper class twits dressed in army pantaloons.
On her way to becoming a governess, she stays with friend Amelia Sedley and meets her brother Jos. He’s a walking cartoon, described as a ‘‘lardy loafer’’. He’s a 30-year-old virgin whose journey to romance is fortified alcohol.
He’s scared off by military mates, so Becky travels to the home of Sir Pitt Crawley (Martin Clunes) to start her governess duties. There, she meets the ultimate dysfunctional family who only live in the minds of 19th century novelists.
It’s a delightful story populated by an aristocracy of actors who’ve sought these roles since leaving Harry Potter. Olivia Cooke as Becky is superb, supported by Clunes, Suranne Jones and Frances de la Tour as Aunt Matilda.
Somehow I managed to get UE by reading Thackeray. Add this TV series and I would’ve won a scholarship to Harvard.
In Secret Life Of The Holiday Resort
(Prime Sundays) about 10 million Brits contribute to global warming by lying poolside like Moby Dick. Two thousand a week arrive at Holiday World on the Spanish coast.
They’re out to improve themselves and their position near the water by staking their claim as early as 5.30am each day. They’ve paid for the ‘‘all you can eat, all you can drink’’ package and leave half a stone heavier at the end of a fortnight.
They consume 6000 calories daily, with 1000 cans of baked beans being sacrificed at the all-day buffet. More than half the tourists admit to peeing in the pool, so the water quality has to be checked daily.
David Attenborough should be narrating this primal ritual from England to the Costa del Sol and back again. It’s human migration like Con Air flights from Australia to New Zealand, but they only go one way.
Even without Attenborough, the series is engrossing, with the emphasis on gross. The enjoyable Bletchley Circle (Vibe, Mondays) has relocated to the US. Two original cast members remain and they sleuth their way to San Francisco to investigate a copycat murder. If it sounds good, it isn’t. It’s clumsy, but let’s be generous and try again next week to see if the codebreakers solve the homicide.
A couple of weeks ago I viewed Dad’s
Army to see how it shaped up 50 years later. Sadly, despite the characterisation, it didn’t. This week I watched Please Sir (Jones, Mondays).
John Alderton as Mr Hedges was still quirky, but the dialogue would lose a debate with a doorknob. It had an IQ of room temperature.
I thought how far comedy had come until I saw The Lonely Hearts Motel (TV3, Monday). It was part of Comedy Pilot Week and featured mum, her son and bizarre half-son, who badly manage a motel in Palmy.
It started with promise. Roy, the halfson, resembled Basil Fawlty, with a five o’clock shadow, and delivered some smart lines. But very quickly it fell apart. It exhausted every joke about rats, skidmarks in the toilet and bodily fluids and had nowhere to go. In Roy, the episode had deprived some village of its idiot and even mum (Ginette Mcdonald) couldn’t save it by winning Lotto.
Yet there was something there, a spark. It was an episode that wasn’t released, it escaped. Now, it needs to be recaptured and, like a C-minus essay, sent to the naughty chair for improvement.