Bring joy to your life... and your sock drawer
The House On Cold Hill (peterjames.com) is on tour until June 15.
THE JAPANESE are hardly renowned for their TV entertainment shows. They’d much rather build another flat screen than watch one. They gave us sumo, which is wrestling without the laughs, all the funny shows Clive James once based his excellent Saturday night TV show around, and spirited gameshows in which you might die.
So to have a relatively unknown Japanese woman, Marie Kondo, fronting a hit Netflix series is not to be harrumphed at. Well, not yet. (Netflix) is quite the most bizarre show I’ve seen since watching a canal boat pootle through the countryside in an un-narrated “slow” TV show. You often wonder “Where next for TV?” It seems we have now arrived there: Tidy TV. Marie is diminutive, incredibly smiley and also manages the great trick of talking (in Japanese – she has a translator by her side) while grinning generously. For at least two episodes, if you haven’t drifted off into a panic about the Everest-height of your ironing basket, you will find her utterly compelling.
Then you will wake up and go “I’m watching a show in which people are taught how to fold socks”. Like stuffing a mushroom, life is too fraught for us to do this. By the way, if this is your chief pastime and you’re a Marie Kondo fanatic, you can look in my sock drawer any time. But it won’t be pleasant: my socks are not standing on their toes, as is Marie’s wont. She has two catchphrases. One is: “I love mess.” Really? Even if a child throws up on your shiny shoes? Her second: “Does it spark joy?” If not, throw it out.
“Joy” is a rather weird word which was last heard spoken by one of the Famous Five as lashings of ginger beer were imbibed. Marie also talks about “closets” which conjures up something very different to “wardrobes”. For us, people mostly come out of closets.
The best aspect of the show is “walking” into people’s homes which
Tidying Up With Marie Kondo
fashion-challenging rain hat which she would reveal in a moment of high drama. She’s hardened her language too, to deal with the gravity of the situation, shouting to one miscreant: “I’m warning you, sunshine. Don’t push your luck!” He did look worried.
It’s a long way from previous series when she would toddle along the beach with her sergeant, apprehending people for aggravated jaywalking. Vera, leave the troubled estates to Luther.
I would be keen to watch a mash-up of the two, though. They both like a battered motor, for one. But who would drive? Vera, probably still in the Land Rover while Luther would hang out the window giving the local Geordies a whole lot of Cockney attitude. It sounds exciting, I know.
Newly award-winning Danny Dyer (he landed a National TV Award for his performance on EastEnders) was hilarious in
(BBC One, Wednesday). If you weren’t laughing, you were trying to work out what on earth he was talking about. Was everything in rhyming slang? Were there subtitles? He can certainly talk, which is half the challenge for a new TV historian. If in doubt, he would offer: “Let’s take a pipe.” What?
One of the funniest moments was when he ate goat’s or sheep’s tongue and rather regretted it. He walked off to “spew me ring up”. Who knows what it means? But it was very funny. Is EastEnders now this amusing? As he indulged in the world of William the Conqueror, another relative, he discovered “everyone was on an ’orse...” Yes, Danny. They were.
By the episode’s end, he appeared to have a small epiphany over seeing the tunic worn by Louis IX, another relation. And in a cathedral, he gushed in the style of David Starkey: “You could see God plotting up in here...” Give this man a PhD. Realising he now also had saintly blood in his veins was too much for this fictional publican. He almost fell to his knees. He’ll be getting stained glass in the Queen Vic soon. Finally, it’s not often we lavish praise on the
(ITV, Tuesday) which is always a shouty showcase for ITV shows. But the Special Recognition Award for the BBC’s David Dimbleby was a memorable moment for this extraordinary broadcaster and audience alike. And quite emotional, too. Watch ITV now swoop on Dimbleby for a new show.
Right Royal Family National Television Awards Danny Dyer’s