Who needs soap operas when shrieking apes are just as fun?
Lockdown Britain is running out of soap, and it’s got nothing to do with how much we are washing our hands. Stocks are desperately low of our favourite telly dramas.
Unless new episodes can be filmed, Emmerdale could be off air by the end of this month, with the lights going out on coronation Street soon after that. Head of studios kevin Lygo has vowed this cannot be allowed to happen: ‘ITV without soaps is barely ITV,’ he says.
The answer could be to depict characters stuck indoors, with families self-isolating — and use smart editing to hide how far apart the actors really are.
But the BBC has denied reports that EastEnders will go back into production next month. ‘no dates have been set for filming to resume,’ a spokewoman said, ‘and we will not return until it is safe to do so.’
There is an alternative. Forget actors and film with monkeys instead. narrating the wildlife documentary Primates (BBc1), chris Packham explained that life for our closest cousins is all about fahhh-mily... just as it is on Albert Square.
Apes and monkeys would make great soap stars. They spend all day shrieking at each other, the children are delinquent, but the adults are worse, and they’re shameless show-offs.
Train a couple of macaques to screech ‘Rickkk-aayyy!’ and ‘Beeyankaarrr!’ — then filming could restart right away.
In the latest plot, a family of dusky leaf monkeys move in to the Square and immediately start bickering about who is going to cuddle the baby. The Primates camera crew captured delightful shots of assorted aunts and sisters crowding round a young mother, making grabs for her bright orange infant. It looked like they were playing tug-of-war with donald Trump’s hairpiece.
one of the most touching segments showed Barbary macaques in the cedar forests of Morocco’s mountains, huddling at night to stay warm as temperatures plunged below zero.
An old ’un, who was once an alpha male with a harem, but had now lost both his status and his girlfriends, shivered alone... until a band of youngsters joined him. They weren’t going to leave Grandad to freeze.
How many times has Phil Mitchell ended up like that elderly monkey — out in the cold, until his family rallies round to save him?
If you’re pining for soaps, take a look at norwegian period drama State Of Happiness (BBc4). It’s a Scandi version of dallas, set at the beginning of the north Sea oil boom, as the men in Stetsons fly in from Texas.
Amund Harboe plays christian, air-headed heir to the town’s fish canning business who turns his back on family duty to become a deep-sea diver. Anne Regine Ellingsaeter is his fiancee, beginning to realise she has twice his brains and ten times his ambition.
The Americans regard the oil as theirs and treat the norwegians as dispensable. when 17-year-old Toril (Malene wadel) tells her oilman boyfriend she’s pregnant, he remembers an urgent appointment in Houston and tries to fob her off with an envelope stuffed with dollars.
All this could seem cheesy, if it weren’t for the simmering undercurrent of secrets and politics that Scandinavian drama does so well. The Sixties trimmings are faultless, too, with an emphasis on stylish cars.
If you’re not convinced you fancy an eight-part serial about rival oil companies prospecting in the bitter waters beyond the fjords, it’s worth watching part one just to enjoy the way a scene with maps and compasses becomes a pulsating thriller when it’s set to duane Eddy and the Peter Gunn theme.