Racy Lady W got Auntie Beeb’s bloomers in a right old twist
Auntie Beeb has been ‘playing rantum scantum’ . . . which is an archaic and very rude way of saying she’s got her bloomers round one ankle again.
After three weeks of pretentious hankypanky with the Bloomsbury drama Life in Squares, Monday nights got even racier as The Scandalous Lady W (BBC2) served up the tale of an 18th- century pervert and his randy wife.
‘My mother did not tell me that playing rantum scantum would be thus,’ tittered natalie Dormer in the title role. For viewers who didn’t have a historical slang dictionary at their elbow, the meaning was pretty clear from the state of nat’s nightie.
the Game Of thrones star, who made her reputation as Anne Boleyn in the tudors, was playing an i nnocent young heiress called Seymour. it was an apt name for a girl whose new husband got his kicks peeping at her through a bedroom keyhole as she unbuttoned her silks, unlaced her satins and plucked off her ostrich feathers.
it must have been the glorious costumes that tempted natalie to make this one- off period drama, because it certainly wasn’t the script. this retelling of a notorious court case, when the MP Sir Richard Worsley sued the Army officer who had run off with his wife, was rigid with lines heavier than lead.
‘they say she’s worth £100,000 a year to the man she marries,’ announced one character, who had popped up at a party to tell us that Seymour was the girl to watch. ‘i doubt there is a wealthier, more eligible heiress in the land,’ he added, in case we’d missed the point.
But it wasn’t just the dialogue that made this 90 minutes of solid slog. Writer David eldridge was playing flashback ping-ping, ricocheting back and forth through the story until the narrative was as blurred as the soft-focus bedroom romps.
He started off at the very end, with Worsley ordering his wife into exile. this was 1782, as a caption informed us. A moment later, the caption announced it was 1781. unless you’d made a note, you might not have realised we were going backwards.
then it was ‘six years earlier’. We stayed there for all of 30 seconds, and twanged back like elastic to 1781.
Pretty soon, the captions were just taking the mickey. they’d say ‘1779’, to introduce Sir Richard or Lady W, gazing mistily though a window and . . . having their own private flashback, to an entirely different year. trying to keep track was like doing sudoku in your head.
it’s hard to create such confusion from a straightforward courtroom clash, but Auntie Beeb managed it. She must have been dizzy from all that rantum scantum.
there were modern parallels to the Worsley case, in Revenge Porn (C4). Once, a jilted husband would attempt to ruin his wife’s reputation in court — these days, many men do it through the i nternet, as j ournalist Anna Richardson discovered.
Almost half of women in Britain have sent suggestive or downright pornographic pictures of themselves to their partners, Anna claimed. there are 3,000 websites around the world where spiteful exes can upload those pictures, t o humiliate and disgrace their former lovers.
And it’s not just the pictures: the men supply names, Facebook links and workplace addresses to maximise the hurt they cause. this is not some rare phenomenon: one u. S. website alone features 800 British women.
Such malice doesn’t work against men. Any bloke vain enough to photograph his bits inevitably thinks he’s got something to be proud of, and wants the world to see.
But as Anna found, it’s very different for women. Often, the photos were taken as love tokens, to please their men, and the act of sharing them with lecherous voyeurs online is not so much revenge as utter betrayal.
After Channel 4’s leering documentaries recently on outdoor s ex and prostitution, t hi s programme might have been a sweaty rummage through some of the nastiest corners of the web.
instead, it was a sympathetic, respectful warning to women. As one girl said, always apply the nan test — if your nan would be embarrassed to see it, don’t send it.