Christopher Howse delivers his verdict on Vanity Fair
The sets were lovely, the Regency clothes convincing and the romantic juveniles better looking than nature on average supplies. What more could be wanted for a Sunday night costume classic than (ITV) reconstructed by Gwyneth Hughes into an easy-to-follow tale of the orphan Becky Sharp (Olivia Cooke), on the make and angry with the world?
Is Becky the picaresque heroine or the insufferable egotist of the story? We may have had our doubts when she manipulated her friend Amelia (who would “cry over a dead canary” – wouldn’t we all?), played winningly by Claudia Jessie. By the end of the episode, as she declared “Tomorrow will be better than today”, Becky seemed another Scarlett O’hara.
In a costume drama, a favourite game for the audience is to spot anachronisms. They might have punched the air in the first minute on seeing the galloping-horses roundabout (as in Oh! What a Lovely War) introduced by Michael Palin as Thackeray in the role of ringmaster. It was lit by electric bulbs.
I was more worried about how much Thackeray would poke his nose in, which in the book he does far too much for my liking. Fortunately he left it at observing that Vanity Fair is the place where “everyone is striving for what is not worth having”.
Even so, a surfeit of nudging ensured that viewers spotted dramatic ironies. This turns comedy into archness. There was arch music over the scene where Becky gamely ate some hot curry to win the heart of her friend Amelia’s fat brother Jos (David Flynn). When Amelia’s father (drily done by Simon Russell Beale) spoke slightingly of “mahogany” offspring in India, the black footman Sam glanced conspiratorially towards the viewer in fellow disapproval.
In the book the footman is always called Sambo, never Sam for short. But the word Sambo must not be breathed on screen. Perhaps editions of the novel will in future be printed with the name apocopated too.
Sam (treated fairly sympathetically by Thackeray, who is generally unkind to everyone including servants), turned into a prophet on television by quoting “The rich man in his castle …” from All Things Bright and Beautiful, whose author was not even born at the time of Waterloo.
But as Scarlett O’sharp, having failed to net rich Jos, arrived at the Gothic horror pile of Sir Pitt Crawley (Martin Clunes) to set up a new suitor for episode two tonight, the jury must have been on her side.
The bottom of the barrel was surely scraped in The X Factor auditions episode on Saturday when Andy Hofton, 40, a bald man from Macclesfield, achieved a lifelong ambition by singing a duet of “Angels” with Robbie Williams. Mr Hofton looked like the stalker in Alan Partridge. Perhaps he has Robbie’s face tattooed on his chest.
It’s the first time that I’ve watched The X Factor (ITV). That means I’ve not watched it 417 times. That shouldn’t debar me from an opinion. Indeed, as with going to a new country, impressions are more vivid for me than for someone who watched every episode at their Nan’s before she had to be taken into a home.
Joining the mandatory Simon Cowell (whose little face was constantly wafted with a tiny blue electric fan), Robbie was the most characterful of the show’s new judges. At 44, he is getting so craggy that he’ll soon be scaled by rock-climbers. Facially, he now strongly resembles Lt Col Colin “Mad Mitch” Mitchell, who made a name in Aden in 1967, aged 41.
He (Robbie, not “Mad Mitch”, who is no longer with us) sat next to his wife Ayda (pronounced Ida) Field, who figures in many websites under the question: “Who is Ayda Field?” She is American and wore an evening gown while the boys wore short-sleeved shirts. When thoughtful she often left her mouth open a little.
Louis Tomlinson from One Direction is the youngest new judge. He is still so young that he has not yet acquired a forehead, only a messily combed fringe.
As for the poor contestants, the teen girls were told to join girl bands, or not; two bouncing black guys were told by Ayda, “That was epic, sick, cool”; and a hungover barman from Bradford via Benidorm, was left bathed in tears of joy.
I wasn’t. If Vanity Fair is like a comfort film on a long-haul flight, The X Factor is like an annoying distraction in the departure lounge when the plane home is delayed.