Unhappy families make for a comedy with class
Like buses painted in funereal black, you wait ages for a new sitcom about a dead father and then two come along at once. Arriving a mere week after Channel 4’s Mitchell and Webb vehicle Back, was – how aptly titled – The Other One (BBC Two) to wring some more laughs out of deceased dads. Us fathers must try not to take it personally that this is proving such a fertile source of mirth.
Skilfully written by stand-up Holly Walsh, this scene-setter introduced us to half-sisters with the same name: Catherine Walcott. They only learned of each other’s existence following their philandering father Colin’s fatal coronary at his own surprise birthday party.
It turned out he had two families, giving both daughters the same name to avoid slip-ups. As one character said: “I’ve heard of men buying their wife and mistress the same perfume but this is much worse.”
The excellent Ellie White (aka Princess Beatrice from The Windsors) starred as uptight, middle-class Cathy and Lauren Socha as gloriously uncouth Cat. Catapulted into each other’s lives, they became embroiled in a battle over his memory and ashes – before ultimately bonding during a rousing in-car singalong to Supertramp.
Their respective mothers were played with rude relish by Rebecca Front and Siobhan Finneran. However, it was wide-eyed Socha that stole the show, flipping from filth to pathos with impressive ease.
The odd couple set-up and class culture clashes offered rich pickings, from which creator Walsh and Bafta-winning director Dan Zeff squeezed both cackles and cringes. Gags took in such modern phenomena as Ted Talks, Tinder and Deliveroo – alongside more old-fashioned titters about the surname “Guff ” and a suggestive hole in a tree.
The Other One was only a pilot episode but, with such a strong cast and whip-smart script, had plenty of potential for a full series – not least because of a delicious twist in the closing scene. It emerged that “sexual Shire horse of a man” Colin might have a secret third family. The Other One could soon be joined by Another One.
Annoyingly for men in the throes of a mid-life crisis, it turns out that the secret to eternal youth isn’t buying a sports car, growing a ponytail or having an undignified affair with a younger woman. Sorry, fellas. How to Stay Young (BBC One) took a more scientific approach to slowing the ageing process.
Thanks to modern lifestyles, two-thirds of us have a “body age” much higher than it should be.
We may be living longer but we’re not living well. So this three-part experiment, headed by Dr Chris van Tulleken and Angela Rippon, set up an “anti-ageing lab” and challenged volunteers to radically reduce their body age in just three months.
“Good grief, that’s shocking,” said Patrick Luckie, 51, when shown the damage his junk food diet did to his heart: it had aged him 22 years. Time to push his trolley down the fruit and veg aisle for a change. Meanwhile, 54-year-old Harminder Balla used mindfulness to overcome chronic stress, and Jenifer Tutty, 47, used a radical “restricted sleep” technique to cure her insomnia. It knocked years off them.
Rippon herself looked remarkably well-preserved for 72 but the best thing here was van Tulleken. Whether it’s on CBBC (my children adore him and his twin Xand on Operation Ouch, which is essentially Horrible Histories for medicine) or prime-time documentaries, he’s an engaging presence with a bedside manner that never lapses into patronising.
It’s just a shame this format was so creaky. It should have been more in-depth and less dumbed-down on BBC Two, rather than crowbarred onto the main channel as a sort of upmarket makeover show. The subjects were too samey, all aged around 50. A pensioner or a thirtysomething would have added variety.
It could also have been shorter and snappier. We didn’t need to be repeatedly told for an hour that exercise and healthy eating are good, cholesterol and stress are bad. Such common sense advice was hammered home so frequently, that it began to sound finger-waggy. Turning back the clock is all very well, but this programme took up more precious time than necessary.