A rollicking menopausal drama? It’s time to tidy the shed, chaps
That drawer in the shed needs sorting. It’s months since the computer had a proper back-up. and if you don’t organise that box of old music cassettes into alphabetical order, who will?
Chaps of a certain age had better find important jobs to do at 9pm on Wednesdays for the next few weeks . . . because their ladies will be watching Girlfriends (ItV).
this rollicking menopausal melodrama boasts an all-star cast and a writer at the height of her powers. Kay Mellor, fresh from penning Love, Lies and Records on the Beeb, is top of the league at creating believable, engaging, full-on female characters.
there’s Sue (Miranda Richardson), the needy magazine journalist who can make any event — even an old friend’s funeral — all about her. and there’s ferociously loyal mother Gail (Zoe Wanamaker), ready to tear apart anyone who dares breathe a word against her useless son.
Best of all, there’s Linda (Phyllis Logan, best known as housekeeper Mrs hughes from Downton). She’s a kind, somewhat scatty mum, newly widowed and in danger of losing her house. Without a scrap of caricature about her, Linda is ordinary and normal — and right at the centre of the story.
the supporting cast is superb too, with Wendy Craig as Sue’s octogenarian mother, getting ready to marry again, and Paula Wilcox turning up on Linda’s doorstep with a humdinger of a plot twist at the end of the opening episode.
What you don’t get are strong male roles — which is appropriate, since our heroines are at that stage of life when they are most liable to snort: ‘Men! they’re all hopeless, who needs ’em?’ — and pour themselves a half-pint of vino blanco while hubby wisely opts to give the dog a walk.
the blokes in Girlfriends are especially feeble, none more than magazine boss John (anthony head). he thinks he can get away with sacking Sue, despite being her ex-lover. he was even stupid enough to yell at her: ‘You are no longer relevant, Sue!’
What happens to John will probably resemble a wildlife documentary, where lionesses rip a large and dozy water buffalo to shreds before devouring his innards. Except John will suffer more.
When Sue, Linda and Gail first became pals, they were in a pop group, performing gigs to support the Greenham Common women protesting against nuclear weapons. that alone should tell us whether they need men or not.
Wednesdays at 9pm promise some barnstorming drama, though I might suddenly remember that I haven’t finished putting up those shelves in the back bedroom.
a different sort of sisterhood got to work on A Stitch In Time (BBC4), as a group of female historians set about recreating a costume styled by King Charles II — noting gleefully that tailoring was once an exclusively male occupation.
they were quizzed by the fabulously named amber Butchart, who with her beret and copper bob looks like a David Bowie mannequin from his Scary Monsters period. this half-hour documentary packed far more information on the history and art of making clothes than you’ll find in an entire series of the Great British Sewing Bee.
We learned that the flamboyant king invented the forerunner of the three-piece suit, in a conscious effort to create a style that was quintessentially English. how ironic that suits are now what men wear when we want to be conformist, even invisible.
the French hated Charlie’s suits, of course. King Louis dressed his footmen in the ‘English vest’, as a deliberate snub. What do the French know about fashion anyhow?