Remade Talking Heads bring a new spirit to Bennett’s precise portraits
BEFORE Phoebe Waller-Bridge made her name with a one-woman monologue stage play, there was Talking Heads. Alan Bennett’s series of characters speaking directly to the audience aired on the BBC in 1988. Like Fleabag, the characters in Talking Heads tell stories that contain deceptive amounts of darkness beneath the beautifully crafted, light turns of phrase. It’s about the rot that sets into the everyday and grinds us down — preoccupied husbands, lonely wives. Now that Covid has made it impossible for actors to film in close proximity, Bennett is back, with 12 episodes of Talking Heads remade and the cast responsible for their own hair and make-up.
The BBC timed it perfectly, announcing the series just as we were tiring of lockdown and had watched everything on Netflix. A certain type of person on Twitter exploded with excitement but we all felt it — we needed something new to watch. I am cynical about remakes, they rarely add anything and there are so many new writers on whom the BBC could have taken a chance. But Covid made me suspend my negativity; after all this was Alan Bennett, and the new cast was impressive. So how has it dated?
The whole series is on iPlayer but this is not one to binge. That’s not a criticism — it’s just that the performances are so intense that you need a break otherwise you will feel hollow and sad. The BBC is also airing Talking Heads on TV, rationing them out with a couple each night. Tonight it’s Lesley Manville as Susan in Bed Among the Lentils, which Maggie Smith originally performed, and Tamsin Greig stepping into Penelope Wilton’s shoes to play Rosemary in Nights in the
Garden of Spain. Both are about lonely women who can’t communicate with their husbands — a timeless concern and one that many have faced in lockdown. Of course Smith and Wilton were stars but Greig and Manville are too and give masterful, well-paced performances. Greig’s northern accent is patchy but there’s such sadness in her eyes that I forgave her, although I did also wonder if Olivia Colman would be good in the role too.
There are a lot of downtrodden women in Talking Heads, wearing tired cardigans, which slightly detracts from the argument that one of its merits is that it has a lot of parts for older women.
Susan (Manville) is a chain-smoking vicar’s wife with a drinking problem. Her husband is adored by parishioners but ignores her, leaving her to have an affair with Ramesh Ramesh the grocer. She is enchanted by the repetition in his name. Manville captures Susan’s nervous energy and repressed sexuality. In Grieg’s episode Rosemary’s husband is no better. He wants them to move to Marbella, where he can play golf, and she can’t bring herself to tell him that she doesn’t want to leave. As a distraction, she strikes up a friendship with a neighbour who has been arrested for murdering her own husband.
The filming occasionally feels clunky, with unnecessary zooming in, but the piano music by George Fenton, who has worked with Bennett before, is brilliant. It feels theatrical but there’s something engagingly intimate about watching it on TV too where you can see every line of the performers’ faces as they deliver this precisely written script. Greig and Manville bring their own spirit to the original — proving me wrong about remakes. This one deserves as much success as the original.