Last Tango returns with authenticity and bite
We have reached Last Tango: The Bungalow Years. Sally Wainwright’s drama about love’s not-so-youngdream is back, and things have moved on since we were last here. The show began in 2012 when former teenage sweethearts Celia (Anne Reid) and Alan (Derek Jacobi) were reunited thanks to their grandchildren connecting them on Facebook. Not seeing any need to waste time at their stage in life, by the end of episode one they had announced their engagement. Now they are seven years married, living in a smart bungalow with fabulous views and a Lexus on the drive. All appears well until Alan announces he is applying for a job… on a supermarket checkout. Celia is appalled: “What if people see you?”
Last Tango in Halifax (BBC One) has been rightly praised for putting older people on screen and giving them rich emotional lives, but its appeal is far greater than that. Wainwright has a knack for understanding what folk think and feel, and translating that on to the screen with characters who feel absolutely true. There has been the odd soap-opera storyline – remember that murdered husband? – but overall she has created a drama in which people behave as they do in the real world; people who try to end conversations by switching on the TV and saying: “I’m missing Eggheads.” She demonstrates that a show doesn’t have to be “gritty” to be authentic.
Her most authentic creation is Celia, who can be warm and wise but also crashingly rude and a terrible snob. Alan says he wants to keep himself busy. “So do I, but in a supermarket?” On top of this, Alan’s brother, Ted (Timothy West), announces he is coming from New Zealand to stay. Cue Hyacinth Bucket levels of fretting about the guest bedroom and an immediate trip into town to buy new curtains.
Celia’s bite is necessary to the show, because if she was as benign as Alan then witnessing their relationship would be like drowning in sweet tea. It is a terrific performance from Reid, who is helped by the fact Wainwright always gives her the best lines. (A discussion about their differing political views from the first series remains my favourite bit of dialogue from the show. Alan: “You’re going to tell me next that you voted for Thatcher.” Celia: “Well, you can’t have liked Michael Foot?”) Following on from her role as the matriarch in
Russell T Davies’s Years and Years, and stealing every scene in the otherwise iffy Sanditon, this has been an excellent 12 months for Reid.
I could happily watch her all day, but the drama is also concerned with the couple’s extended family. Alan’s daughter, Gillian (Nicola Walker), is still working all hours on the farm and facing a crippling maintenance bill after discovering the place is riddled with woodworm. As for Caroline (Sarah Lancashire), this bit of the script pretty much covered it: “It’s odd, life, the places it takes you. If somebody had told me five years ago I’d be a single parent to a five-year-old who wasn’t biologically mine, living in an old farmhouse in West Yorkshire, head of what was and still is a very difficult school, I don’t know what I would have thought.” If you need to catch up on any of that, by the way, the BBC has just put all four previous series on iplayer.
As for the other characters: Caroline’s idiot of an ex-husband, John (Tony Gardner), continues to learn that the grass is not always greener, stuck with his toxic partner, Judith (Ronni Ancona), and a son (Louis Greatorex) who is attempting to become a Youtube star with content so terrible that it feels entirely realistic. If Wainwright can be faulted, it is for her very young characters: Gillian’s granddaughter Calamity is an absolute horror who I fear we are supposed to find comically cute, and a shoplifter encountered by Alan was a Dickensian urchin with an annoying line in patter.
On the big subjects, though, Wainwright is spot on. Money is at the heart of so many family rows, and so it was at a family lunch when Alan let slip that he was lending Gillian several thousand pounds for those farm repairs – putting the brakes on Celia’s plans for a new kitchen. Perhaps you agreed with Celia’s attitude to saving and her disdain for adults who rely on their parents for handouts instead of taking responsibility. Or perhaps you are more of an Alan, believing it’s a parent’s place to help out a child in need. Either way, you know that only a brave soul would stand between Celia and her handcrafted kitchen units.
Last Tango in Halifax