A celebrity travelogue that posed important questions
This was the money shot – the one BBC One nabobs must have had in mind when they commissioned Miriam’s Great American Adventure: septuagenarian “nosy little Jew” Margolyes surrounded by imposing gang members in O Block, the notorious Chicago housing project. Two series of The Real Marigold Hotel had established her as being outspoken, funny and flatulent. So where else would Margolyes start her journey than in The Windy City?
This was an hour of few revelations, but many minor pleasures and the occasional overturned expectation on the part of both presenter and viewer. Margolyes cut a gloriously incongruous figure, yet this inveterate talker also proved an engaged listener as young black men, frozen out of the American dream, articulated their frustrations and fears. Minutes later, she was hustled into her car by security as there was a fatal shooting. “If I lived in this place I would be murdered,” she mused, “because I can’t keep my bloody mouth shut.”
Just as there was eloquence, thoughtfulness and graft on the margins, Margolyes found – rather to her surprise – the same among the rich and well connected, courtesy of Playboy bunny turned socialite Candace Jordan. “It’s hard for other people to understand that I want to look like this,” the defiantly unglamorous Margolyes grumbled, not unreasonably, before being made over to better blend in at a society fundraiser.
Finally, she met José, a Congolese man who was primed for his citizenship ceremony. Sceptical about why anyone would want to live in a country whose leader is so splenetically opposed to immigration, Margolyes was won over by José’s wide-eyed optimism and the rite of citizenship itself, as patriotic pride was tempered by talk of collective and individual responsibility. “I heard the voice of America I love,” she said, genuinely moved. “Of generosity, welcome, inclusion, of wanting things to be better. And that made me feel happy.”
Fresh insights were thin on the ground for anyone with half an eye on the news. The poor are getting poorer, the rich, richer, and hope now comes from grassroots community movements rather than the head of state. Louis Theroux, this was not. Director Simon Draper’s occasional interventions also merely exposed the artificiality of the premise. “Why on earth are you going [to America] now?” he asked. “Because I’m being paid to,” she perhaps should have replied, but instead said, “Because it’s to be done.”
Yet her unsinkable personality ensured it was never dull. While she offered few answers, Margolyes at least posed some important questions.
Adecent idea and three excellent performances lay at the heart of Girlfriends (ITV). Miranda Richardson, Zoë Wanamaker and Phyllis Logan were Sue, Gail and Linda, childhood friends entering their seventh decades with reckonings looming. Linda’s husband, Micky (Steve Evets), had disappeared, presumed drowned, during a cruise trip to celebrate their anniversary, leaving behind mountainous debts. Gail was newly divorced from her husband Dave (Adrian Rawlins), managing her ailing mother Edna (Valerie Lilley) and welcoming her son Tom (Matthew Lewis) out of prison. Sue was being sidelined from her job at a struggling bridal magazine by her married lover John (Anthony Head).
Plenty to be going on with there, you might think, and a drama featuring older women should always be welcomed. But Girlfriends is a Kay Mellor six-parter so, like Love Lies & Records, In the Club and so on, the narrative is ludicrously overstuffed. To whit: Gail’s son Tom (whose own son, incidentally, was also on the scene) was rekindling a fling with Linda’s daughter, while Sue’s mother was poised to remarry and her son was, unbeknown to her, in a steady gay relationship. In the episode’s climax, a mystery woman turned up on Linda’s doorstep to accuse her of murdering Mick – who, you can virtually guarantee, won’t be dead after all.
This frantic over-plotting was presumably intended to deepen the central characterisations but merely lengthened the cast list. The leading trio worked wonders with a drama too often smothered by suds and the best scenes were those they shared alone. When careworn Linda, self-involved Sue and exasperated Gail were allowed to get on with finding nuance and subtlety in the seeping unhappiness of their late-middle age, Girlfriends gripped. For the most part, however, it just floundered in extraneous subplots.
Miriam’s Big American Adventure ★★★ Girlfriends ★★