This twee Diana drama will not live on in our memory
As the abdication of Edward VIII and the assassination of John F Kennedy were to earlier generations, the death of Diana, Princess of Wales is one of those rare events that is suspended in time in the memory for those who lived through it. In
(BBC Two) writer Jeremy Brock played on this idea, creating a gentle, if unchallenging, portmanteau drama that spun out four fictional stories of lives lived in that week in 1997 and how they were affected by the tragedy.
There was divorced Glaswegian florist Mary (Tamsin Greig), who saw an opportunity to resolve her money worries – and get respite from her mother (Gemma Jones) with Alzheimer’s – by nipping down to London with an old school pal Gordon (John Gordon Sinclair) to flog flowers to the millions of mourners. Bereaved Jack (Nico Mirallegro) found the strength to come out to his dad (Neil Morrissey) when his mother died the same night as the Princess. In Bradford, Yasmin (Kiran Sonia Sawar) ran away to London when her failing marriage to a failing businessman saw the bailiffs move in. And, in Paris, ambitious young reporter Michael (Laurie Davidson) sacrificed his honeymoon with wife Sophie (Charlotte Hope) for a chance to be in on the biggest story of his life.
As so often with anthology formats, engaging as these stories were, none of them was entirely satisfying, starved of sufficient time to develop the depth and emotional force needed to convey full dramatic impact. Mary and Gordy’s blossoming relationship probably got closest, but despite good performances by Greig and Sinclair, there was a sticky sweetness to it that pushed it into the realms of the twee. Additionally there was something just a little too tick-box about the story selection (gay – tick, ethnic minority – tick, Alzheimer’s – tick, soulless journalist gets his comeuppance – tick) that verged on the patronising, even if it never fully embraced it.
Still, it was very watchable, even enjoyable in how it pinpointed that particular moment in time. It might have had more resonance if it weren’t for the countless hours of archive clips, interviews and retrospectives that have already aired for the anniversary of the Princess’s death, which have stirred memories more profoundly with the real drama and tragedy of that time, and recalling our real responses to it. But compared to the events it was set against, Diana & I is unlikely to live on in our memory.
White Kid, Brown Kid (Channel 4) followed two teenage girls attempting to bridge the religious and ethnic divide in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire – described as one of the most racially segregated towns in the UK. The Cutting Edge documentary brought 16-year-old Siobhan from the predominantly white village of Chickenley together with 17-year-old Farhana from mostly Asian Batley Carr to see if they could be friends.
It felt a touch over-orchestrated, even manipulative, at first. Siobhan was a looks-obsessed teen who liked to drink and party, and whose values (“The people off The Only Way Is Essex, they’re proper classy”) seemed wildly at odds with reserved, religious, eminently sensible Farhana, whose life was so parentally controlled she had never once been out shopping for her own clothes or travelled on public transport.
But youth is a magnetically bonding thing, and after the initial embarrassment and awkward questions about social and cultural differences, more deep and meaningful chats about clothes, hair and make-up soon had each of them deciding that actually the other was “dead nice” and “really nice” respectively. Which was certainly heart-warming.
More interesting was the degree to which social pressures and sensitivities almost put the kibosh on the project altogether. Not least when Farhana’s mother, concerned that her daughter’s reputation might be sullied by her involvement, asked filming to stop altogether.
That was negotiated past, cleverly, by bringing the two families together. And that was where the real breakthrough took place. Farhana’s father Imran was open to stretching a point occasionally in the name of “overcoming these issues by sitting down and talking about them”, while Siobhan’s mother Brigid, once on board, was also determined to step out of her comfort zone to make it work.
After the gloom brought on by witnessing how deep the rift seemed to be between these two Yorkshire communities, it was reassuring to see hope reignited by how little movement it actually took on both sides to find enough common ground for friendship.
Diana & I
White Kid, Brown Kid