Daily Mail - Daily Mail Weekend Magazine
Never gossip after a few G&TS
That’s what Dawn French’s character does in her new sitcom – and the fallout is disastrous for everyone
Dawn French reckons we all get a kick out of telling tall stories to boost our egos. But throw in a couple of gin and tonics and a radio reporter and it’s a recipe for disaster. Or at least it is for Dawn’s character in this week’s first episode of her new six-part ITV drama The Trouble With Maggie Cole.
Amateur historian Maggie has invited friends and family to her beautiful seaside garden in order to listen to an interview she gave to the local radio station a few days earlier, supposedly extolling the virtues of her home town of Thurlbury and its inhabitants. But unfortunately, thanks to a few G&TS, she goes dramatically offscript and starts gossiping about some of the well-known locals, which it appears she was too squiffy to remember doing. And it’s not just idle tittle-tattle either, some of it is potentially explosive.
According to Maggie, Brian, a local pub landlord, is a gangster on the run from London, the husband of one of the town’s respected GPS is having an affair and the woman set to replace Maggie’s husband as headteacher of Thurlbury’s primary school ‘is not the sharpest tool in the box, to put it mildly’. Maggie proceeds to reveal the names of a couple who’ve supposedly been hiding a big lottery win, and suggests the daughter of the family who run the village store has the morals of an alley cat. Oops!
‘Maggie was flattered to be asked to do the interview and she enjoys telling stories and embellishing them, just like the rest of us,’ says Dawn, 62. ‘She wants to matter, she wants to be considered important, she wants to have her say. The problem is she had too many gins before and during the interview, and carelessly threw people’s reputations down the toilet. In a way, Maggie was betrayed by the interviewer, but she also led herself into the situation.’
Maggie, her husband Peter, son Jamie and daughter-in-law Becka then have to try to limit the offence she’s caused as the series – which also stars Julie Hesmondhalgh, Vicki Pepperdine and Mark Heap – progresses, which is easier said than done. ‘What starts out as a small story that’s done a bit of damage becomes much bigger because of social media,’ explains Dawn. ‘Her interview goes viral.’
The Vicar Of Dibley star believes audiences will sympathise with Maggie, even if she has just dropped many of her neighbours into a vat of trouble. ‘She’s obviously a gossip, but that doesn’t make her a dreadful person. We’re all gossipers, it’s about how you handle that gossip and the aftermath. And Maggie is contrite. She sets off on a pilgrimage to the door of each person she gossiped about on the radio to apologise. It turns out that there’s a bit of truth in some of the stories she came out with, and quite a lot of untruth. In some cases she finds out the story is ten times bigger than she told it, or is about something completely different. For some people, what she said genuinely helps them.’
Running alongside Maggie’s mea culpa is a separate plotline that viewers will get a brief glimpse of at the start of the first episode. A pedestrian is thrown onto the bonnet of a car as it ploughs into them on a busy street, potentially inflicting serious injury.
More details of what happened are revealed as the episodes unfold and many of the main characters are drawn into this storyline too.
The Trouble With Maggie Cole was Dawn’s idea. She intended writing it as a novel until Sophie Clarke-jervoise, an executive producer on Jack Whitehall’s hit sitcom Bad Education, visited her home in Cornwall. ‘She came to see me as a friend and said, “Please don’t write that as a novel, can we have it for telly?” I told her I didn’t have the time to write it and she said, “I know exactly the right person.” And Mark Brotherhood [who’s written for Benidorm and Cold Feet] was indeed the right person because he’s done a very good job.’
Dawn says she’s all for people trying to make amends, although sometimes the wounds run a little too deep. ‘Some things are harder to forgive than others, personal things are very hard to forgive,’ she says. ‘But I absolutely believe in forgiveness, and like anyone else I can be too quick to condemn.
But we all know in our hearts that there is no future to anything unless you can forgive.’
Tim Oglethorpe The Trouble With Maggie Cole, Wednesday, 9pm, ITV.