A welcome return for Alan Bennett’s dark side
It is easy to forget that Alan Bennett does darkness. Perhaps it’s the Yorkshire vowels that suggest a Last of the Summer
Wine whimsy, or the fact that some of the great actresses who have performed his work – Patricia Routledge, Thora Hird, Julie Walters – were known for their comedy chops. Nina Stibbe’s portrayal of him in her
Love, Nina memoir, endlessly popping in and saying Bennettian things (“You don’t want tinned tomatoes in a beef stew”), cemented the idea of him as an amusing figure in a cardigan.
But return to Talking Heads, as BBC One has done by reviving Bennett’s series of monologues in which outwardly respectable people reveal their inner thoughts, and some of them can take your breath away. The second instalment in the opening double bill, An Ordinary Woman, was genuinely shocking. Sarah Lancashire played Gwen, a mother who became sexually fixated on her 15-year-old son. “He’s 15, but he looks older,” she said. Then, helplessly: “I didn’t think this could happen. I thought there was genes or something, that give you immunity.”
Gwen was in the throes of a crush, believing her feelings were reciprocated. When next we saw her, she was sobbing in the bathroom; her son had reacted with horror to the news. “Loving isn’t against the law,” Gwen protested. Bennett wrote An
Ordinary Woman recently, one of two new additions to the roster. It’s difficult to imagine how this would have played – and how it would have been received – if the Gwen character was a father and not a mother.
Bennett treats all of his creations with compassion, even when their behaviour is hateful. The first episode here was A Lady of Letters, which might just be a perfect half-hour of drama, each line of dialogue revealing another layer. Imelda Staunton was terrific as Irene, a lonely, bitter woman peering out through the net curtains. It contained one of Bennett’s most poignant lines: “Sometimes I catch myself saying, ‘Oh, it will be better the second time round.’ But this is it. This is my go.”
The BBC’S head of drama, Piers Wenger, made a smart move when he decided to bring back the plays. They’re perfectly suited to socially distanced filming, and lockdown is providing plenty of time for introspection. The little details date them – Irene’s talk of transistor radios and Basildon Bond – but they stand up to anything that has been written in the intervening years.
Gareth Malone should be prescribed on the NHS. There is something about his manner that lifts the spirits. I confess that the prospect of yet another one of his choir series didn’t fill me with excitement, yet by the time I was half way into The
Choir: Singing for Britain (BBC Two), I felt cheered to be in his company.
Malone has spent lockdown inspiring people to sing along from their sitting rooms via his online Home Chorus sessions. In this programme, a hand-picked few were given a moment in the spotlight. Malone chose a care home worker, a student nurse and a doctor to co-write and perform a song “to represent how Britain is feeling during this unique moment in time”.
Rather than being irrepressibly chirpy, Malone let us know that he was feeling quite fed up with lockdown – stuck in a studio at the end of his garden, conducting rehearsals via Zoom. He has grown The Lockdown Boredom Beard. But he was full of enthusiasm for his latest project.
The three front-line workers he chose were all young: Hannah, a first year trainee critical care nurse, was just 20. She told Malone about how tough work has been through the pandemic: “I had a shift the other day. I just got back and cried. Not being able to drive and see Mum and Dad makes it harder.” William, a dementia care worker, tested positive for Covid-19 during filming. By the time he returned to work, 23 of the 103 residents in his care home had died. Sarah, a junior doctor, explained what the choir had meant to her. “This experience has really got me through because it has been lonely.”
Malone worked his magic and coaxed lyrics and melodies out of the trio, before putting them together in song. Hannah and Sarah performed a duet, except one was in Cambridge and the other in Cardiff so it was just for television. The entertainment value of the programme was limited by circumstances: “It’s rubbish being here when they are out there. Basically, I’m just in my garden with a cup of tea,” he said. But he was there with moral support, for the members of his choir and for the rest of us at home.