Bodice-ripper safe for a maiden aunt
MANY will share my advanced state of stir crazy. So I now offer hope. I’ve detected at least two exciting plots in (ITV, Sunday).there may also have been profundity, along with a typical Itv-style “no-sex-please-we’re-british” bedroom scene – in glamorous Isleworth, West London.what more could you want?
The “excitement” relates to blackmail. Everyone’s at it here. Downstairs, upstairs, even the delivery boy was greasing his palm with the odd shilling.this is because there are two stories of which the interested parties would rather no one knew about.this means that everyone else is happily feasting on the gossip. End result: top drama, thank you Mr Fellowes.
First plot is the affair between Alice Eve’s very naughty and very married Mrs Oliver Trenchard (aka Susan) and the betrothed John Bellasis (twinkly
Adam James) who will inherit the Brockenhurst estate.
This man has a constant smile on his face. One can understand. He has won the lottery of life: a toff who stands to inherit, and with a crash pad in Isleworth.wit too. On “accidentally” meeting Mrs Trenchard in Kensington Gardens he quipped: “I was in Trafalgar Square. Nelson’s Column is taking its time.” I say!
But he’s pushing at an open bedroom door with the fragrant Mrs Trenchard who can unburden any undergarment in a flash. She has a reason; she’s stir crazy too. “It’s hard to fill your days when you’ve got nothing to fill them with.” She feels our pain.
Good reason then to release that restraining corset while telling her husband that she’s inspecting orchards (what?) inwest London.things have never been so fruity on the allotment.
But not if you’re an ITV drama producer.they gave us a rendering of their tryst that even Mills & Boon would sex up.who knows it even happened. Recovering themselves, Bellasis was shown helping Mrs T refasten her corset. ITV has officially discovered “afterplay”.
Then there’s the illegitimate Charles Pope. He would actually be heir to the Brockenhurst fortune if news got out of his real father. Gambling mad vicar James Fleet, an impecunious Brockenhurst, is minded to spill the truth to escape his £1,000 debt. Divine intervention required.
Atheist Dom Joly wouldn’t brook any of that nonsense in
(BBC Two, Friday). For a show about religion, it is rammed with agnostics, non-believers and a lapsed Muslim.are they hoping for a Damascene conversion? There’s more chance of Dom Joly, a left-wing atheist, starting a new political party with fellow pilgrim Edwina Currie.
They did appear to bond, however, as they visited a display of Bolshevik statuary.as Dom put it, a “garden of Communism”. Or a huge waste of granite. The most sensitive enquiries came from Adrian Chiles. He wondered what attracted Muslim Mim to potential girlfriends. Mim said a lasting relationship. “Not gratuitous sex then?” wondered Chiles. Chortle... Father Ted’s Pauline Mclynn, a lapsed Catholic –was this cast by a comedian? – was scatological. “I’m doing poos like sheep droppings.” Photos proved it. Father Dougal would be proud. There’s madness too in
(C4, Friday)
STEPHENSON’S ROCKET
Where has all the great TV gone? News reaches deepest suburbia that many shows “have been put back for the autumn”. Why? We need them now! We’re imprisoned in our own homes. By the autumn anything could have happened, but we need escapist comedy and thrilling drama now. There is the odd exception, but I suspect an apparent lack of advertising (we don’t care!) means channels are putting their best shows on the shelf. Don’t forget, schedulers, without us you’d be on bus routes. which is