The marvellous Margolyes is frank and funny about flab
Nearly half of the UK population is officially obese. Or, translated into Miriam Margolyes speak: “It seems we have become a nation of humongous arses, sagging bellies and pendulous bosoms.” Margoyles is one of them, and she won’t mind me saying that because she refers to herself as “bloody fat”. She doesn’t say this cheerfully; her body has caused her a lifetime of self-loathing. “If I could migrate my whole personality onto someone else, I would be delighted.” Who? “Claudia Winkleman.”
Miriam’s Big Fat Adventure (BBC Two) saw her meet people who were trying to lose weight, people who had lost weight, and people who had no desire to lose weight because they were happy with their size. Throughout, she deployed her marvellously direct conversational style. “S--t, that is a lot!” she said to Georgia, a young woman who revealed she had once weighed 21 stone. “You’re not a small person yourself, are you?” she asked the partner of a man who had lost 10 stone. And to a football coach she sat next to in the pub: “Would you f--k a fat girl?” He spluttered a yes, sort of. “Well, I’m encouraged!” Margolyes beamed.
The show wasn’t very focused – the question of whether everyone who over-eats has psychological problems, or whether some people just love food or are predisposed to weight gain, was never explored. But who wants a focused Margolyes documentary? Just sit back and enjoy it. She is so entertaining that you wish they would hire her for Newsnight. She could do wonders for The One Show. Hearing that Georgia had been mocked by a boy over her size, she said: “I hope you got hold of his testicles and squeezed them until his eyes watered.”
Because Margolyes was in the same boat as the people she met, she never patronised them. They included Will, a former Harrow schoolboy who had struggled with anxiety, which manifested itself in eating too much. Margolyes recognised herself in him. She delivered plenty of frank insight into what it is like to be unhappily overweight. “It’s a miserable fate and I’m sure there are loads of fat people who agree with me. They might not want to be perfect, but they don’t want to be fat and they are right,” she said.
But then she attended a dance class for big women who now love their bodies, and the idea that you can be fat and happy made sense to her. Watching Margolyes twerking along was the most joyful TV moment of the year.
So let’s get this straight. In Liar (ITV), serial rapist Andrew Earlham (Ioan Gruffudd) is on the run as one of Britain’s most wanted men. Yet he can walk unnoticed through the hospital where he used to work – past colleagues and police officers – through the brilliant disguise of wearing a baseball cap? Righto.
No one expects a prime-time TV drama to be an exercise in realism, but come on now. The writers have decided to keep the plot moving by lazily piling on the coincidences. Such as Andrew’s accomplice, Oliver (Sam Spruell), walking down the corridor of said hospital at the same moment that Andrew’s son was being wheeled along it, handily catching a bit of dialogue that explained why he was there. Andrew sneaked into his son’s private room – patients in thrillers are never on a ward, and as an added bonus this room conveniently had a trolley full of surgical instruments from which Andrew could steal a scalpel – and of all the nurses to walk in, the one that did happened to be his victim’s sister. Andrew sneaked out of his boatyard hideaway and was spotted by the husband of another victim, who happened to work there. How small is this town, exactly?
Andrew then broke into the home of Laura (Joanne Froggatt) because of course she had left a window open – why worry about security when your psychopath stalker is on the loose? – and then had to hide because of course Laura chose to come back at that very moment. By this point it felt as if writers Harry and Jack Williams were falling back on the cheap thrills of a woman-in-peril set-up, all told in flashback to maximise our fear of Gruffudd’s bogeyman. I can see why they’re doing it – Gruffudd carried the first series, and remains the strongest thing in series two.
Katherine Kelly’s detective is preposterously unprofessional, tipping off the press and goading an interviewee while he pleaded for a solicitor. Meanwhile, Laura’s sister, Katy (Zoë Tapper), was finishing off her second bottle of wine while staring blankly at the TV, and after watching this I knew the feeling.
Miriam’s Big Fat Adventure ★★★★ Liar ★★