Gemma’s a delight – but is she a funny woman? Er, no
Sky Max, Thursday ★★★★★ Clarkson’s Farm
Amazon Prime, Friday ★★★★★ Happy Valley
B BC1, Sunday ★★★★★
THIS adaptation of a Nick Hornby novel stars Gemma Arterton as Barbara Parker, a 1960s English seaside-town beauty queen who aspires to become a comedian. Arterton is charming in the role, a delight, but the trouble with Barbara Parker, as the titular Funny Woman, is that she isn’t a funny woman at all. I kept waiting for her to be funny but gave up after three episodes (of six), on the basis that three hours is enough time for anyone to be funny, if they are.
This is certainly beautiful to look at, with exceptionally classy production values, even if, on occasion, Arterton appears to have been green-screened against actual vintage footage, which is weird, but I don’t hold that against it. It opens as Barbara is crowned Miss Blackpool Belle (1964). Her dad (David Threlfall) works in a seaside rock factory and her fiance (Karl Pryor) is a butcher, so she’ll never be short of tripe or rock, but Barbara wants more from life so flees to London in the hope of becoming a comic actress.
This is because she loves radio comedy and Lucille Ball. (Is that a qualification? I love The Repair Shop but, please, never trust me to sew up your teddy.) Her first job, though, is in a posh London departtime. ment store, where she tells a customer that the fur hat she’s trying on makes her look as if a dead badger is sitting on her head.
That’s Barbara for you! This North of England lass will say anything! Certainly, her boss, played by Doon Mackichan, is not amused.
She’s a pursed-lipped dragon, while Barbara’s aunt (Rosie Cavaliero) back in Blackpool is also a pursedlipped dragon. This series really has it in for older women, I’m sad to say.
Meanwhile, Barbara’s comedic talent is mostly restricted to pulling faces or flapping her arms while making chicken sounds, yet she does acquire an agent (a louche Rupert Everett). He changes her name to ‘Sophie Straw’ as that’s sexier, particularly as ‘straw’ suggest ‘a roll in the hay’.
This does explore the sexism of the time, and the anti-North of England prejudice of the time, repetitively and without drama. In fact, it’s flat, I think, because there is virtually no drama at all. Mostly it’s just Barbara/Sophie being late and racing to make an important audition while being splashed by passing buses and arriving soaked.
Eventually, she is cast in a television sitcom which, from the looks of it, is the least funny sitcom of all If the characters had some kind of depth, it’s possible that wouldn’t matter too much, but as they don’t, it does.
On to Clarkson’s Farm, everyone’s favourite show if it’s allowed to be their favourite show any more. I don’t know. When he made those remarks about Meghan Markle, it’s said that Amazon came down hard on him, but given that Amazon happily sells Hitler’s Mein Kampf, in every language under the sun, I’m not sure we can look to it for moral guidance.
Anyway, I don’t watch for Jeremy, as I watch for Gerald, the ‘head of security’ whose West of England accent is so strong that he’s pretty indecipherable.
I’ve never understood a word he’s said but there is something so pure of heart about him, he may now be my favourite human ever.
Clarkson is still ‘farmering’ his 1,000 acres in the green and idyllic Cotswolds, and it’s definitely business as usual, by which I mean it’s not long before Clarkson and his combine harvester have a run-in with a telegraph pole, or he upsets my Gerald by doing something terrible to a hedge.
Cheerful Charlie, the land agent, is also back, delivering bad news like a kindly vicar, and get this: post-Brexit, the farm will lose £82,000 (€92,500) a year in subsidies. Holy moly, I’d no idea. Kaleb Cooper, the local boy who does most of the work and has sported some interesting hairstyles, is, at least, a little more adventurous now. Only joking. We learn, this time out, that he’s never eaten a curry or been on a train.
But the farm’s biggest problem is with the locals. The farm shop causes traffic jams for miles, and now Clarkson wants to open a restaurant. He organises a meeting to sweet-talk the villagers. It doesn’t go well. As one villager angrily notes: ‘You said, “Every village has a moron, I have six…”’ The new ventures, meanwhile, include cows, cockerels (fiendish escape artists) and growing chillies.
Clarkson wants to produce a chilli sauce and his first attempt, in a test kitchen, had me laughing out loud. Which is what happens when a show is funny.
Last, Happy Valley, which has been awarded five stars everywhere else, probably rightly. The performances were fantastic, and while Sarah Lancashire and James Norton have been highly praised, I don’t think enough has been said about Mark Stanley, who was excellent as the horrid PE teacher.
But I’ve given it four stars here, and I’ll tell you why. It lost half a star because there was no closure to the storyline involving Faisal the pharmacist. I can’t see how the police are going to link the dispensing of drugs unlawfully to the murder of Joanne, can you?
And another half because we never discovered why little Poppy never took her coat off.
What was under there? Something? Or nothing? AND NOW WE’LL NEVER KNOW!
PHILIP NOLAN IS AWAY