This multicultural love story strained credibility
Dramas about secondgeneration immigrants tend to be variations on a theme. Parents arrive from a very different country eager to guard their traditions, while their children integrate into the host society and object to marrying within the culture. This summer’s hit romantic comedy film The Big Sick covered the story in Chicago. The Boy with the Topknot (BBC Two), adapted from the memoir of Sathnam Sanghera, visited similar territory in Wolverhampton, only with a straighter face.
In this telling, Sathnam (Sacha Dhawan) had flown the nest for Cambridge University and then the lofty peaks of journalism where he’d fallen in love with, indeed put a deposit on a flat with, his white blonde girlfriend Laura (Joanna Vanderham). His fear of telling his mother (Deepti Naval) became entangled with anxiety about the schizophrenia of his father (Anupam Kher).
The script (by Mick Ford, who had a cameo as Laura’s father) was dotted with signposts. The schizophrenia – at least as it’s popularly misunderstood – symbolised the divided soul of British Sikhs. “My parents have an excess baggage problem,” Sathnam muttered as he dragged a pair of suitcases up the stairs. If this were a creative writing project you’d want to pepper the margin with ticks.
I was eager to surrender to this soul-searching and impeccably acted critique of multiculturalism. But it was hard to give in entirely to a script which portrayed journalism with such slapdash inaccuracy. There’s no money nowadays for bubbly-necking or Ferrari-hiring. Absurdly, Sathnam learned of his sacking in a passing comment, not from a boss or the HR department.
It also strained credibility that Sathnam, brainy enough to get a first in English, was quite so blind not only to his father’s illness but also his sister’s. And yet under all the crude narrative scaffolding there was a moving story about a mother and a son edging towards mutual understanding.
“A girl was not consulted about their marriage,” said Sathnam’s mother, forcibly thrust into a wedding with a dud, “any more than a cow being asked which field to graze in.”
Compare and contrast with Sathnam. One generation down and in another continent, he and his girlfriend can share secrets in the bath. In the context, Vanderham’s nearnudity didn’t feel remotely gratuitous. One day, perhaps, these stories will no longer need to be told.
The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel has a lot to answer for. The hit film about pensioners retiring to India spawned the BBC series The Real Marigold Hotel in which elderly celebrities sampled subcontinental living. Now ITV has half-inched the idea of superannuated entertainers on tour and packed them off to the US. Their task: to sample the healing properties of marijuana.
It’s not just the concept that’s been borrowed. Gone to Pot: American Road Trip has nicked Marigold’s star turn too – diamond darts man Bobby George, who with eight titanium screws in his back and three missing toes has more need than most of round-the-clock analgesia. He was the most daring dabbler of the party which boarded the magic bus in San Francisco. By the time they got to Monterey, he was vomiting in a bag after a marijuana-flavoured meal – pot-roasted pot, as it were.
The actress Pam St Clement, who sounds far plummier than her Eastenders character – was also a keen puffer and got the giggles. Linda Robson viewed it as a potential replacement for hormone replacement therapy, while Christopher Biggins, who is asthmatic, had marijuanainfused ointment massaged into his thighs, happily not on camera.
Also along for the ride was committed ascetic and manifestly non-geriatric John Fashanu, who in his role as finger-wagging party pooper proved a little too successful. “I’m high on life,” he explained, boringly. Eventually he tried some marijuana ice cream. “Absolutely nothing happened,” he shrugged.
And that’s sort of what the whole programme was like. Much gong, not a lot of dinner. None of the grizzled guinea pigs was inquisitive enough to ask any searching questions. I was curious for a little bit of science to explain precisely why a joint will help one’s joints, rather than just take a pot dispensary salesman’s word for it.
Watching other people have fun is not always fun, and, really, this lot didn’t seem to have it anyway. The bus continues for two more nights. I’m getting off here.
The Boy with the Topknot ★★★ Gone to Pot: American Road Trip ★