Our male leads should be just a little more buttoned-up
There was only one thing on my mind 20 years ago, almost to the day, as I left for my honeymoon. I turned to my new husband and said the words every man wants to hear on an intimate occasion: “Are you sure you’ve set the video recorder for Pride and Prejudice?”
Those days in Paris meant I would miss episode four of Andrew Davies’s famously sexy BBC adaptation; I felt like a horror-struck groom on the realisation his wedding reception clashes with the World Cup final. But my frustration blossomed into triumph. The programme we recorded was the notorious “wet shirt” episode, when Colin Firth’s Mr Darcy plunges into Pemberley’s lake and reemerges with his linen blouse clinging to his torso. I spent many a happy moment with the video controls, rewinding the scene, until my husband remarked that we’d only been married a week, but he already had a good case for divorce on grounds of unreasonable behaviour.
Davies realised long before the rest of the dramatist pack that women tended to be in charge of the TV controls on Sunday nights, so six-pack appeal was a ratings winner. For the first time Mr Darcy wasn’t just rich, handsome and haughty, he was breeches-bustingly sexy. The series gained a global following of obsessive female fans, whose devotion has lasted two decades and shows no signs of fading. Two years ago the lake scene was voted “the most memorable moment” of all time in TV drama and a giant sculpture of Darcy in his sopping shirt was placed in the Serpentine. Heaven knows what’s planned for this month’s 20th anniversary – but Colin Firth streaking through the lake at Buckingham Palace to simultaneously commemorate the Queen’s epic reign might tie up the nation’s jubilation in one joyous package.
Davies’s inspiration may well have been the more time-honoured tradition of eroticising male flesh on the big screen. Many women of my acquaintance have long cherished the glimpse of a young Richard Gere in underpants in American Gigolo, or Alan Bates and Oliver Reed wrestling naked in Women in Love. It just took a while longer for this insight to reach TV’s drama bosses. When it did, it went from trend to convention in a season. Now there’s such an onslaught of toned chests and rude Vs of exposed upper groins, that turning on the box is like passing an ad for Abercrombie & Fitch.
Poldark’s Aidan Turner started the pecs race when he was filmed scything barechested and enjoying a naked dip in the Cornish sea. Then Richard Madden bared nearly all as Mellors in Lady Chatterley’s Lover – having already disrobed for his role as Robb Stark in Game of Thrones.
The current televisual emphasis on male beauty can go too far, as when Douglas Booth’s Pip (never described by Dickens as having the bee-stung lips of a male model) in the recent Great Expectations outdazzled poor Estella. And there were legitimate accusations of overkill when Ben Batt stripped off to – yawn – take a dip in a lake for last week’s adaptation of The Go-Between. We women may seem easy to please, but, as every student of the erotic arts knows, familiarity breeds contempt.
Perhaps it’s time to return to more fully-clad passions. I found myself obsessed with Alan Rickman’s Obadiah Slope in 1982’s Barchester Chronicles because, not despite of, his ecclesiastical garb. And Benedict Cumberbatch’s army of female fans swoon at his buttoned-up charm as Sherlock. In short: more clothes please, we’re British.