Why we can’t resist a tough woman on telly
As ratings soar for female-led dramas . . .
Men — who needs ’em? not the makers of this year’s most successful TV dramas.
Strong female characters played by Britain’s best actresses have dominated our screens since Christmas.
The lack of strong roles for actresses, especially women over 40, has been a perennial moan of female stars. All the best parts go to men, is the refrain.
The latest to join the chorus of complaints was Amanda Redman, the 59-year-old star of The Good Karma Hospital on ITV. ‘There really aren’t very many good roles for women in their 50s and 60s,’ she griped earlier this year. ‘When you get a bit older, once you get to the bonnet brigade, you’re fine, but the years in between are the worst.’
But one look at 2017’s most successful TV dramas reveals that simply isn’t true. Strong female characters have been at the forefront of The Replacement, Prime Suspect 1973 and Unforgotten.
The men are mostly sidelined, on show for comic relief or a touch of villainy. And it appears that’s what viewers want to see, because many recent dramas which rely on male leads, such as SS-GB and Taboo, have fallen in the ratings.
It seems we’re bored of flying fists, gun fights and fiery explosions. What TV fans want from a tale is suspense, with emotions so tense that by the end of an hour we’re ready to scream. And women supply that so much better than men.
Take a look at The Replacement, BBC1’s three-part thriller about the lethal rivalry between young architect ellen (Morven Christie) and the woman who covers her maternity leave, Paula (Vicky McClure).
Almost from the moment they meet, ellen mistrusts and resents her replacement. She fears this ‘other woman’ is trying to muscle in on her whole life — on her job, her friends, even her new baby.
It’s electrifying... and to many women, terrifyingly true to life. Any woman who takes maternity leave is bound to have misgivings about handing over. What if the newcomer does the job better? What if she doesn’t want to leave... and the bosses don’t want to see her go?
Remake The Replacement with men in the central roles and it wouldn’t ring true. even in an era of job-sharing and paternity leave, male execs don’t face the same pressures when a baby is born. If two men squared off in the workplace the way ellen and Paula do, scoring points in the boss’s office, it would just look like alpha-male chest-beating — harmless and faintly comical.
BeTWeen women, though, it’s a fight to the death. And if a man was convinced a colleague was out to wreck his life, no one would dismiss his concern as hormonal delusion. The Replacement, then, is a reminder that, for maximum psychological drama, the characters have to be women.
With his reinvention of Broadchurch, writer Chris Chibnall has seized on this trend as detectives ellie Miller and Alec Hardy (Olivia Colman and David Tennant) investigate a crime in the Dorset town. This time it’s not murder, but rape.
For while Hardy might think he’s leading the investigation, it’s Miller who understands the real implications of the crime. During the interview with rape victim Trish (a brilliant Julie Hesmondhalgh), Hardy crashes in and demands answers.
Just as Trish is beginning to find the courage to describe her ordeal, the insensitive Hardy scares her off. He cannot understand this crime is emotionally different to murder.
Hesmondhalgh seemed to bring the whole production to a bonechilling stop as her character revealed the sex attack left her so racked with shame that she wanted to die. ‘I wish he’d killed me,’ she said — and, crucially, she was not talking to a man. Her admission came during a counselling session with Beth (Jodie Whittaker), whose own son was killed previously. When it comes to deep emotions, women open up more to other women.
Hardy is a stranger in Broadchurch, an outsider in a world he doesn’t understand. And he’s an outsider in this case, too, a man blundering among women.
But at least he isn’t there just for comic relief; the fate of men in TV’s top Sunday night dramas. While nuns and nurses save babies and wrestle with romances in Call The Midwife (BBC1), caretaker Fred Buckle (Cliff Parisi) is simply there to mend their bicycle punctures.
As the parish doctor, Stephen McGann has a more fulfilling role, but it’s his wife Shelagh who bears the brunt of the family’s emotions, and who will be centre-stage this weekend as her own baby is due. McGann’s job is to smile ruefully and do the washing up when told.
Over on ITV, in the Indian medical drama The Good Karma Hospital, neil Morrissey is a beach bum and boozer, about as much use as a parasol in a monsoon.
He’s the on-off lover of Amanda Redman, as the formidable head of the hospital. When she requires some hands-on attention, that’s neil’s duty. But one thing we don’t do is take him seriously.
The second part of Prime Suspect 1973, starring Stefanie Martini, airs tonight on ITV, with a supporting cast of male detectives who are not to be taken seriously either. This Seventies CID squad is stuffed with men who spend more time measuring their porn-star moustaches than hunting for criminals. To these blokes, the station’s female recruit is good for nothing but making tea and flashing her stockings. We know different: she’s Jane Tennison, who by the nineties will evolve into the unstoppable cop played by Helen Mirren in the original Prime Suspect.
Right now, she’s only 22, but making mincemeat of the chauvinist pigs at the station. The pathologist tried to turn her stomach in the morgue, by disembowelling the body of a murdered prostitute; Tennison just held a cigarette under her nose to deaden the smell, and raised one bushy eyebrow.
equally indomitable is DCI Cassie Stuart (nicola Walker), in charge of the historic crimes probed on ITV’s Unforgotten. Her detective sergeant, Sunny Khan (Sanjeev Bhaskar) follows her like a puppy desperate for a pat on the head.
He went too far when he tried to kiss her, though. DCI Stuart wasn’t so much shocked as amused, like the maths teacher whose pupil reveals he has a crush on her.
The ‘weaker sex’ still exists on TV, but now it’s the men. The real-life drama based on the disappearance of schoolgirl Shannon Matthews on BBC1 last month, The Moorside, hammered home that truth.
Sheridan Smith was shatteringly good as the big-hearted Julie Bushby, who mobilises the whole of her run-down estate after the nineyear-old daughter of a friend disappears. This story was emotionally complex; Julie’s own son was running wild and her loyalty to Shannon’s mother blinded her to the truth: the kidnapping was fake.
A man in the same role would have seemed weedy at best. Smith made Julie all the more admirable for her flaws. Meanwhile, the men on the Dewsbury estate were all drunken weasels and paedophiles. no wonder this Yorkshire town was a matriarchy — the fellers couldn’t be trusted to mind a burger van.
EqUAllY pathetic were the men in BBC 1’s Sunday-night thriller Apple Tree Yard. emily Watson played a bored wife who was lured into an affair by a fantasist, who hinted heavily he was an MI5 agent. Her husband was having it away with his young researcher, and her vicious colleague had turned stalker after raping her at an office party.
These characters — weak, deluded or brutish — destroyed her life. She only wanted a quick knee-trembler; what she got was an earthquake that brought the house down.
And if final proof were needed that men on TV are a liability in 2017, take a look at ITV’s disastrous The nightly Show. It launched last week with David Walliams, displacing the news At Ten and sending its audience galloping for other channels.
John Bishop took over on Monday and ratings picked up to almost three million...but by the following night, they’d halved to 1.5 million.
ITV can admit they’ve blundered, and bring back the news, or they can try to rescue the format. And according to the rumour mill, who do they hope will save their bacon?
The girls from Bake Off, Mel Giedroyc and Sue Perkins. Women get all the juiciest roles these days.
seven months pregnant when he pushed me down, pinning me under the weight of his 6ft 2in frame and putting his hands round my throat. ‘Die!’ he screamed, tightening his grip.
I thought this was the last face I would ever see. That the man I loved would murder me.
Then a desperate voice cried out. It was a terrifying rasping sound, squeezed out on my last breaths of air. Begging for my life. ‘Please. Ben. Please!’
They say your life flashes before you just before you die. My brain went into slow motion. I saw my parents coming home to find my corpse. It was visceral and intense. A white tunnel of light closed in around me.
How long I was unconscious for I don’t know, but I came to as he was dragging my body across the floor. I didn’t even feel the shattered glass as it cut into my flesh.
Then for some reason, he went to the kitchen and started smashing everything there. I fled for my life.
I walked into the nearest police station. My throat was swollen. In a hoarse voice I told them: ‘My husband tried to kill me.’
They took my statement and then me to hospital. They charged him with assault and issued a restraining order. (He would later be convicted and given a suspended sentence as a first time offender.)
It seems incredible to admit, but I let him back into my life shortly before our baby was born. It was a combination of fear, now I knew what he could do to me, and a yearning for my baby to grow up with a father.
He promised things would be different now and I wanted so badly for us to be the happy family he’d said we’d be.
I’ve since learned that if your partner has strangled you in the past, the odds of them killing you are nearly eight times higher.
On average it takes a woman seven attempts to leave an abusive man. I tried the first time when my son was six months old.
But the drug-like pull back to Ben was so great. It took a lot for me to accept that the risk of my death far outweighed that illusive high.
I left for good when my baby was one — taking just him and whatever I could fit into my car.
What changed? I had a sudden moment of clarity. If I loved Ben unconditionally, I had no right to expect him to change.
I was also a mother now. I had to give my son the best start in life I could. I didn’t want to bring him up in a violent home. That was just the first step to recovery. When you leave a toxic relationship, the withdrawal is agony.
You’ve been numb for so long and then a rush of emotions pours out at once. Shame, anger, loneliness, guilt. But you need to feel these emotions. You need to go cold turkey.
Unless you look hard at yourself, you risk going back to them. Or replacing them with a different drug, in the form of another abuser. Either way, like any addict, you risk losing your life.
This is not to victim-blame. An abuser is 100 per cent responsible for their actions. I didn’t fall in love with a violent man. I fell in love with a man who later became violent towards me. There’s a difference. It was not my fault. I know that. But abusers are adept at spotting and manipulating vulnerability.
You need to ask: why is it I still love someone who abuses me? Why is it I need to numb myself with someone who is like a drug to me? With someone who is no good for me?
I had to learn my propensity for this kind of addiction was in me way before I ever met Ben. Only then could I stop trying to fix him and focus on healing myself.
It comes down to self-esteem. With zero self-worth, we attract those who treat us as worthless. You need to understand what caused that and how you came to feel that you aren’t good enough.
As painful as this is, once you understand this and face those fears down, your insecurity melts away. Little by little you begin to love yourself.
I turned my life around. I remarried. Thanks to the lessons I learned from my relationship with Ben, I’ve spent 30 incredible years with a man who is my best friend. We also had a son. Both my boys have since grown up into beautiful, loving, well-adjusted men.
BEn still came in and out of our lives for a time. I chose to never say a bad word about him to our son. I’ve now not seen Ben in decades.
I forged a successful career, first as an actress in TV soaps and series, such as Prisoner Cell Block H. Then, as a news and current affairs reporter and foreign correspondent based in Asia.
Today, I am an executive producer, making documentaries for major UK, U.S. and Australian broadcasters. I’ve told other people’s stories and now I’m ready to tell my own story, as a survivor of domestic violence. It’s one many of my friends and closest colleagues don’t know about me.
I’m speaking out because the statistics are still shocking and unacceptable. Partners or exes kill two women every week. I could have been one of them.
I’m not a psychologist or medical professional, but I hope my story shows anyone can be seduced into a destructive relationship.
Even without any history of it, anyone can become a victim of domestic violence. But there are warning signs that shouldn’t be ignored. no love is worth dying for.
I am proof there is life after abuse. And it can be beautiful.