Fretting about her tum? This new mum is hardly Hattie Jacques!
Diminutive movie star tom Cruise says he is able to play the character of giant crimefighter Jack Reacher — twice his weight and 12 inches taller — by ‘acting big’.
eve myles has to pull off the same trick in Keeping Faith (BBC1), in which she’s an overweight mother- of-three whose husband sets off for work one morning and disappears.
Passing any comment on an actress’s shape is now regarded as hate speech. Suffice to say, miss myles doesn’t seem obviously obese. You don’t look at her and think that, as tony Hancock once said of Hattie Jacques, she’d need two lorryloads of wool to knit herself a jumper.
But as solicitor Faith Howells, fretting about her return to work after maternity leave, she was constantly worrying about her weight. She spent the first five minutes trying to wrestle herself into a dress for a night out — and when she finally got zipped up, her cocky nine-year-old took one look and announced there was no room for a pizza in there.
On her first day back in the office, the buttons pinged off her jacket with the force of shrapnel.
the idea, i suppose, was to convey Faith’s insecurities. She thought she’d let herself go to seed, and feared this might have something to do with the sudden disappearance of husband evan (played by real-life partner Bradley Freegard).
But she had a lot more to be insecure about than a spare tyre. there’s her hubbie’s fake driving licence for a start, hidden in a plastic bag behind a drawer, along with a wig and a pair of glasses — those mainstays of impenetrable disguise.
then there’s the awkward fact that everyone in Faith’s West Wales village seems to know more about her marriage than she does. evan’s sister tells everyone, ‘ He hasn’t been a happy man for months,’ and the junior partner at the law firm seems to take it for granted that a divorce is looming.
the nosy biddy across the road has been keeping notes on how often the couple sleep in different rooms, based on what lights go on and off.
She tells police contentedly: ‘ there’s only one place colder than a loveless marriage bed ... the grave!’
this is shaping up to be a satisfying domestic mystery. But it’s shallow and lazy to keep harping on about Faith’s weight problems, as if nothing could worry a woman more.
Joiner John wasn’t bothered about a few extra inches, on Eat Well For Less (BBC1), though his family in Blackpool lived on takeaways — spending at least £200 a week on chips, noodles and pizzas.
He had his own diet regime . . . drinking seven pints of supermarket cola a day. the amount of sugar he glugged was terrifying: a barrelful of it every month. John reckoned he needed it for energy. What did he do in his lunch hour, run marathons? Bizarrely, he and wife michelle did a £200 shopping trip every week, stocking the fridge and cupboards with food they’d never eat because of the nonstop takeaway deliveries.
it all beggared belief, but presenters Gregg Wallace and Chris Bavin weren’t interested in asking too many questions. they just tried to trim the bills.
that’s fine, because a small serving of Gregg goes a long way. this show is best when it concentrates on recipes and tips on saving cash at the check-out.
But seven pints of cola . . . surely you’d blow up like a hot air balloon. now that’s something for Faith to worry about.
APPETISER OF THE NIGHT: Real-life detective Louise Harries told how she cracked a cold murder case in The Game Show Serial Killer (ITV). It nicely set up the return of Nicola Walker as DCI Cassie Stuart on Sunday, in superb drama Unforgotten.