Television
‘My idea of Hell,’ said Anita Brookner, ‘would be Ambridge. Quiz Night at the Bull, the ultimate punishment.’
Having lived two decades in the Herefordshire Balkans, I fully concur. I was so bored I thought I was dead.
The brilliance of This Country, therefore, is that blissful comic capital was mined by Daisy and Charlie Cooper from rural claustrophobia, where there is nothing to do save look forward to the scarecrow festival, vintage steam fair or annual duck race. An afternoon may be killed getting a pound coin out of the drain with a magnet. The setting is the Cirencester environs, where they still rely on dial-up internet and Fred West is remembered fondly as a reliable builder.
Kerry and Kurtan Mucklowe, whose days the cameras dwell upon, follow a cat around the village, try to avoid Mandy, the village psycho, bicker about whose turn it is to have use of the top shelf in the oven, and wonder if there may be a job going in Halfords in Stroud. Kurtan thought about doing a GNVQ course in Swindon, but was dissuaded by something called pesto on the cafeteria menu. Kerry, having been a pet babysitter, is sacked from the local recycling dump after she purloins a discarded foot spa.
Now and again, the characters bump into the vicar, who is always trying to maintain his jollity, wanting everyone to like him. There’s also Len, a disgusting pensioner, and June, the busybody, who complains about ‘scuffage’ on her lawn-sprinkler. Though there is no musical accompaniment, the soundtrack is loud with sweet birdsong. There are lingering shots of hedgeless, bleak fields, pylons receding to infinity, rancid caravans and dual carriageways with petrol stations.
Celeste Dring, who plays Kayleigh, Kurtan’s subnormal girlfriend, without strain plays Princess Eugenie in The
Windsors. Clearly the peasantry in This Country have much in common with royalty: everyone is a genial idiot with little inclination actually to earn a living.
The Royal Family expect a free life of luxury, and hard work might entail hosting parties for Arab businessmen, wearing uniforms, attending Bond premières, opening leisure centres and visiting Hitler in Argentina in the Sixties. In The Windsors, Meghan is always going on about ‘self-actualising’, and Kate is happy to be a demure baby machine, ‘conformist and robotic’.
The entire thing is more plausible than The Crown, and my bet is that the Palace much prefers it. Harry Enfield, with red cheeks, is the Prince of Wales, who has waited so long to ascend the throne he has gone slightly bonkers. Haydn Gwynne is simply wonderful as a Camilla who has turned into Cruella de Vil, knocking back the whisky and laying plots like a panto Plantagenet.
The evillest woman on telly in ages was Imelda Staunton in Flesh and Blood. Her face scrubbed, her eyes beady and tiny, she was the poisonous next-door neighbour, always popping in unannounced, steaming open the post, poking through bedroom drawers, fiddling with the contents of the medicine cabinet. It was hardly a surprise, therefore, when she was unmasked as the villain, who’d tried to smother Stephen Rea when he fell off a balcony and landed in the rockery.
All the characters, indeed, were obnoxious. Rea was a creepy ex-surgeon who’d seduced newly widowed Francesca Annis; and her grasping children, their inheritance imperilled, weren’t having
any of it. Russell Tovey, the son, was a gigolo, Claudia Blakley, the daughter, was a cow in charge of an NHS trust, making doctors redundant, and Lydia Leonard, the other daughter, stalked her boss and wanted to have his babies.
I remember Francesca Annis when she was Elizabeth Taylor’s handmaiden in Cleopatra. She’s still an attractive woman, despite going in for these spaniel clumps of hair on either side of her head.
I do wish, however, that we hadn’t needed to see her jogging along the shingle beach and generally making efforts to keep fit. It always annoys me, the elderly taking exercise. What’s the point? The months or years gained will only be spent staring into space in a care home. They should be setting an example, smoking and drinking, not watching their weight. When Francesca’s character started having funny turns, I had no sympathy.
Much as I revere Jason Watkins,
Mcdonald and Dodds is not going to make him the next John Thaw, despite this being a cerebral cop show, with Bath instead of Oxford. Watkins was the eccentric whom everyone begrudged, but of course he always cracked the case. Robert Lindsay was a thumping crook. As we live in a right-on politically-correct era, those in the cast who weren’t black seemed to be gay, ie over-groomed.
Watkins, it occurs to me, should be the new Poirot, when the Suchet shows inevitably get to be remade.