The pulse quickens in this tangy Georgian Fleabag
The weekend on television Jasper Rees
What are we to make of Anne Lister’s sly little glances to the camera? They seem a forgivable flourish for a drama adapted from a diary, and after all Fleabag doesn’t hold a monopoly. Then came the third episode of
(BBC One, Sunday). Anne (Suranne Jones) was making out on the sofa with her new conquest Ann (Sophie Rundle) when prey asked predator if she’d done this before. Anne’s eyes swivelled confidingly in our direction. “What are you looking at?” said Ann sharply.
We’ve been through all this with Andrew Scott’s cool sweary priest. It added a profound and intriguing dimension that he alone saw through Fleabag (Phoebe Waller-bridge). But what’s going on here? There’s no dramatic rationale to explain why Ann should or could be aware of Anne’s communications through the fourth wall. It feels like a selfindulgent mistake.
Perhaps it’s germane that this was the first episode in the series not directed by its creator Sally Wainwright. In charge for this one (and the next) was Sarah Harding. Harding has recently filmed Marple and Maigret, but 20 years ago directed
four episodes of Queer as Folk. That pedigree showed as the drift from flirtation into full-blown seduction was done with a pulse-quickening sensuality.
Jones played Anne as a wily animal on heat, hell-bent on the prize under all that silk and muslin. But it took two to tango. Rundle’s brow furrowed prettily in surprise as she portrayed Ann’s romantic confusion and, ultimately, daring. She’s no passive drip in this telling, even after being caught in flagrante delicto by her nosy neighbour Eliza Priestley (Amelia Bullmore).
Of course we root for Anne Lister as a gender pioneer who punches up, but she is by no means beatified by Wainwright. She’s also a snobbish enforcer of the status quo set to thwart the desire of her sister Marian (Gemma Whelan) to marry into trade. Ann is a landed lady worth thousands. “Wouldn’t you say that was a prudent match?” she suggested. “Yes of course,” replied her aunt Anne (Gemma Jones) tartly. “If you were a man.”
Meanwhile, the sub-plots form a tangy cocktail of marital comedy, industrial skulduggery and Oedipal murder. As Anne gorged on Ann, there was a generous dinner for the Sowden family’s pigs. Yum and yuck.
The talk show in the UK, in its traditional form, is dead. Michael Parkinson, answering the questions on Piers Morgan’s Life (ITV, Saturday), didn’t quite come out and say so. Graham Norton is “a party giver”, he reckoned. Jonathan Ross has “lasted the course”. But they’re emcees more than interviewers. They’re not a patch on Parky.
Whatever it is, Morgan’s show doesn’t quite adhere to the chat format either. It works as a soft biographical conversation. Morgan’s questions are peppered with banter and braggadocio and a narcissistic urge to chat about his own status as host. Parkinson was prepared to blow only so much smoke up Morgan’s fundament: “you are proactive, fearless, and sometimes you’re a total twerp.” Morgan could do worse than listen to the tip Alan Whicker once gave Parky: “the best question is the silent nod.”
Anyway, the tables were turned here, with the great questioner questioned. The pre-publicity was all about Parkinson’s toe-curling interview with a plucky young Helen Mirren all those years ago. The real meat of the encounter was Parkinson on his love and admiration for his father Jack, a miner who successfully steered him away from the pit, and the son’s grief at his death. As he recalled the undertakers taking him away “like a parcel”, Parkinson broke down.
Getting your interviewee to cry is usually a feather in a questioner’s cap, but I wondered if we had any right to witness this private torment. Morgan, through kindness or embarrassment, changed the subject to Muhammad Ali.
Elsewhere, this sprint through Parkinson’s career included plenty of pop-up plaudits, mulched down to the tiniest gobbets. Twiggy, recalling the resumption of his chat show in the Nineties, appointed herself spokesperson: “We were just thrilled he’d come back! We really missed him!”
Parkinson was pre-eminent, but even he concedes that he was lucky his guests in the Seventies were happy to break their silence. There could have been more on why celebrity interviews, with the possible exception of this one, aren’t what they were.
Gentleman Jack ★★★★ Piers Morgan’s Life Stories ★★★