A buzz about Troy story
ICAN’T claim to have seen every episode of Long Lost Family, the ITV series where Davina McCall and Nicky Campbell help reunite people torn apart by fate. I’m not familiar with its every heart-rending story, its every harrowing account of wretched misfortune. So I can’t say for sure that it’s never featured an “I was abducted by wild animals” case study. It just seems quite unlikely.
But even if it has, I doubt it was half as moving as the one featured in the opening episode of TROY: FALL OF A CITY (Saturday, BBC1), courtesy of Prince Alexander (Louis Hunter). This Trojan chappy, AKA Paris, having suffered precisely such a calamity within days of his birth, had eked out a humble existence for his first two decades on earth before discovering that, golly me, he was actually of royal stock. Yes, quite: he was the Trojan Danny Dyer.
“I was stolen from the palace window as a baby by wolves,” he explained at a dinner given by Sparta’s King Menelaus and wife Helen (Jonas Armstrong and Bella Dayne). “A shepherd found me on the mountain and took me into his house. He called me Paris. He taught me to ride, and run cattle. For 20 years, that was my life...”
“Yeah, right,” I half-expected Menelaus to grunt. “Pass the ketchup, will you?” But in fact the king sounded impressed by his guest’s backstory.
Mind you, he had good reason to stay civil. He was after a trade deal with Paris’s father, an iffy arrangement that would involve the prince marrying Menelaus’s daughter Hermione, and presumably turning a blind eye to the fact she was little older than a pair of my socks.
Paris, of course, was secretly more interested in Hermione’s mum. The feeling was mutual. Helen – yes, she of the shiplaunching face, but ballsier here than she’s traditionally been depicted – initially insisted things were fine between her and her dreary husband.
She was fibbing, naturally, and soon she and Paris were getting somewhat naked together. By the time the titles rolled, Helen had done a runner, stowing away on lover-boy’s Troy-bound ship, hiding in a huge wooden box, as one does.
Menelaus will go spectacularly nuts, of course, when he finds out. So episode two should be even more fun, if you can imagine.
Talking of fun, John Cleese is so closely associated with his Basil Fawlty character, even now, that it’s hard to know what we should reasonably expect from him in any other sitcom role.
In BBC1’s new Sunday night series HOLD THE SUNSET, he plays tetchy 70-something Phil, while Alison Steadman plays Alison Steadman. They’re neighbours, chums and ex-lovers from aeons back, and in episode one they were popping open the fizz, having agreed to spend their twilight years as husband and wife.
This celebration lasted roughly 9.8 seconds, before Alison’s nitwit man-child of a son, Roger (Jason Watkins), turfed up on the doorstep, his marriage over, and told his mum he was moving back in. As comic set-ups go, I guess this has potential, in Roger’s case mostly, to annoy us. But I wanted more, particularly from Cleese.
There’s a poignant undercurrent to Hold The Sunset that recalls Carla Lane’s Butterflies. But the man-child part brings to mind Sorry!, the old Ronnie Corbett vehicle. I’m not sure it’s a winning combination.