RICHARD PORTER

It’s said we’re living in a golden age of television. Porter’s not so sure

ALL ACROSS THE LAND THE MOST commonly asked question of the last five years has been, “Have you seen...?” followed by the name of a TV show which, to your disappointment, you haven’t. There’s so much quality telly drama at the moment it’s exhilarating, and also quite exhausting, what with all that glossy and expensive output from Netflix and Amazon Prime and the dear old BBC. It’s no wonder you hear it said that we’re in a golden age of television. And that’s before you remember that, somehow, you also have Apple TV+. At least, you think you have. If you’ve ever bought a new Mac or iPhone you probably do, possibly without knowing about it. In that respect Apple TV+ is very much the chlamydia of television streaming services. You can walk around for years without realising you’ve got it. But you probably had it or have it, just from buying an Apple product of some sort. The telly service I mean, not chlamydia. Although, given the absolute crap shoot of trying to pay for anything in one of Apple’s shops, I wouldn’t be surprised either way.

When I realised I had caught Apple TV+ I watched Ted Lasso (which is wonderful) and that one with Jennifer Aniston and Steve Carell being arseholes (which doesn’t quite work because Rachel from Friends and Brick from Anchorman aren’t arseholes) and then alighted on something called Bad Sisters. You might have seen this advertised or been in a conversation with a friend when they dropped the classic, “Have you seen...?”

If you don’t know about Bad Sisters, it’s an adaptation of a Flemish series called Clan, re-written by Sharon Horgan who also stars in it and who, by dint of co-writing Motherland and Catastrophe, has a recent CV most writers would sand their eyes to match. As you’d hope, Bad Sisters has some of that same magic. There’s a chillingly unpleasant bad guy, there’s a brilliantly free-wheeling antagonist, and there’s a beautifully rendered depiction of the warmth and wit at the heart of a family. There’s just one issue I have with Bad Sisters, one which infests many TV dramas, and which is especially bad here. It’s an issue that comes up quite regularly and which leads me to wonder if we really are in a golden age of television after all. I’m talking, of course, about headrests.

In Bad Sisters, Sharon Horgan’s character drives an Audi A5 Cabriolet. Solid car casting, as it goes. She’s the oldest sister, lives alone, no kids, decent job, the A5 goes well with the leather skirt and second bottle of Shiraz vibe that radiates from the character like a heavy spritz of Jo Malone. But there’s something wrong: this on-screen Audi has no headrests. With the roof down this gives an interesting cut-price speedster look. But it also makes the seats looks weird, like a herd of headless animals. And the A5 is only the start of it. One of the other characters, a shambolic insurance man played with clammy-handed brilliance by Brian Gleeson, has an old-shape Skoda Octavia, which has also lost its headrests. Except in one or two scenes where they magically reappear. This happens to the Audi too. And to the Volvo XC60 driven by the vile husband at the heart of the story. God, can you imagine how much of a faff it would be to remove the headrests from a Volvo of all things? And yet, somehow, they did.

There’s a good reason for this, of course. Modern headrests are bulky and they crowd the interior of the car. They’re especially intrusive if you want to frame up a shot looking forward from the back seat, over the shoulders of the two people in the front. Directors like this angle because it gives the viewer the feeling they’re sitting in the car too, and a lovely sense of movement through the windscreen. But you’re not going to see the characters in the front if there are headrests in the way. So they get taken out.

And this isn’t good enough. If there were multiple scenes involving people coming and going through someone’s front door and a director decided it would be much easier to shoot if the door itself was unscrewed and thrown away, it’s highly likely a producer would say, hold on, you can’t do that, it looks daft and everyone watching is going to notice. It would be lazy and unrealistic, yet when it comes to headrests those two things are apparently acceptable. Except, they’re not. TV directors shooting scenes in cars, you need to do better. Otherwise I’m going to cancel my subscription to Apple TV+. Assuming I still have one. In this golden age of television it’s very hard to know. ⌧

In Bad Sisters, Sharon Horgan’s character drives an Audi A5 Cabriolet. Solid car casting…