Fair play to the revision
ADMITTEDLY, I have yet to ask her but I’m fairly confident my mum-inlaw will be hating the period drama VANITY FAIR (ITV, 9pm). She’ll be hating it for precisely the reasons I adore it.
We often exchange views on these adaptations, Jo and I (yes, we’re an odd family) and rarely does she stray from her default position: that such literary classics (this one, by William Makepeace Thackeray, was published 170 years ago) are not to be tinkered with.
With that in mind, tonight’s episode, which finds Olivia Cooke’s fabulously ballsy anti-hero Becky Sharp settling in at the huge, shabby home of the eccentric Sir Pitt Crawley (Martin Clunes), will only reinforce her disdain. In particular, there’s a piece of modern music used at the end that will surely push her over the edge.
Which is a shame, because it’s precisely this kind of tinkering that’s making Vanity Fair such a joy.
It tinkers not out of disdain for Thackeray’s work but out of respect, to replicate its original impact. It wasn’t old fashioned when it was published so why make it old fashioned now? Take the dialogue. Period dramas usually settle for a clunking compromise, having their characters speak in a language that sounds vaguely olde-worlde – and yet not authentically olde-worlde – or else we wouldn’t have a clue what they were on about.
Vanity Fair, thank goodness, barely even bothers. As a result, the characters feel altogether more real. Likewise, the breaking-thefourth-wall thing, where Becky occasional gives a knowing, fleeting glance towards the camera.
Jo will no doubt hate that too but it’s actually a lovely way to enhance the character’s playfulness.
The story itself, of course, has all manner of splendid twists ahead. However the arrival tonight of Frances de la Tour’s character, the wealthy, deliciously potty Aunt Matilda, is a treat in itself, particularly as she and Becky begin to bond.
Becky also has her eye on the handsome Rawdon, Sir Pitt Crawley’s youngest, a sweet natured soul, albeit blessed with the IQ of Marmite (or quince jelly, as my mum-inlaw would no doubt prefer it). I do believe this relationship may have mileage.
Elsewhere tonight on an altogether more sobering note, a powerful factbased drama, MOTHER’S DAY (BBC2, 9pm), takes us back 25 years to 1993, when the IRA bombing of Warrington town centre claimed the lives of two children. Anna Maxwell Martin plays Wendy Parry, whose 12-year-old son Tim died from his injuries days later. Vicky McClure (below) is Susan McHugh, a Dublin housewife so horrified by the killings that she’s moved to launch her own campaign, Peace 93. The two women have little connection at first. If Wendy had her way, that’s how it would stay. Hers is a fiercely private grief but husband Colin (Daniel Mays) feels that if others can share their anguish, Tim’s death won’t have been entirely in vain. “He’s nobody else’s boy,” Wendy insists. “He is now,” he tells her.