Much to admire, less to love in culture wars drama
Critics across the pond have raved about Mrs America (BBC Two), which stars Cate Blanchett and may as well be called For Your Consideration, Emmy Voters, but it left me cold. Which is not to say that it isn’t good – it’s skilfully written, impeccably acted and the soundtrack is a dream. But the idea of spending nine episodes immersed in the fight to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1970s doesn’t fill me with excitement, even with Rose Byrne as Gloria Steinem and, wonderfully, Tracey Ullman as Betty Friedan.
Perhaps it’s because we’ve got culture wars coming out of our ears – I wouldn’t want to sit through a nine-hour series about a global pandemic either. I can, though, admire Blanchett’s performance. She plays Phyllis Schlafly, a conservative activist who took on the feminist movement and led the campaign to stop the ERA in its tracks with her band of Republican housewives. Opponents dismissed her as “a right-wing nut from Illinois” but Schlafly was a shrewd political operator.
If looks could kill, Blanchett’s Schlafly could slay all her enemies with a tight smile. Show creator Dahvi
Waller (previously of Mad Men, a show to which Blanchett’s beautiful costumes owe a debt) gives us all of Schlafly’s contradictions: a housewives’ leader and a full-time working mother; a clever, ambitious character happy to parade in a bikini at a beauty contest as “Mrs J Fred Schlafly”. She is twice the politician of most men she meets, yet they treat her like the secretary at meetings, asking her to take notes. At home she has little power when her husband demands conjugal rights.
Schlafly doesn’t even care much about equal rights, but is savvy enough to spot that this could be her ticket to Washington. The first episode is focused on her, the second on Steinem, and subsequent ones on other players. It feels too sprawling, and the characters too distant – it’s fun to spot the real-life icons in a sort of Feminist Avengers: Assemble, but we are never allowed to forget that this is Important History. The only character who cuts through emotionally is Schlafly’s muted sister-in-law, Eleanor (Jeanne Tripplehorn).
As Schlafly sows disinformation and warns that “a small, elitist group of Establishment liberals” is dominating the political landscape, the message is rammed home. This is a period drama, but very much of the present.
At his best, Alan Bennett is brilliant: poisonous Irene in A Lady of Letters, stoic widow Muriel (Harriet Walter in Bafta-worthy form) in Soldiering On. But by blanket bombing us with 12 episodes of Talking Heads (BBC One), the BBC has shown up his weaknesses.
Miss Fozzard Finds Her Feet embodied his worst tics. As played by Maxine Peake, Miss Fozzard talked like a Coronation Street character from the days of black and white TV despite her monologue dating back no further than 1998. Clothing references as signifiers: the mustard Dannimac, the Viyella two-piece. Dialogue spread on thick as marmalade: “I said to her this morning, I said, ‘Shiatsu’. She said, ‘Come again?’ I said, ‘Shiatsu’. She says, ‘Is it a tropical fish?’ I said, ‘It’s a form of massage that involves various pressure points on the body, invented by the Japanese.’ She says, ‘That’s all very well but it didn’t stop ‘em doing Pearl Harbor, did it?’”
The Talking Heads series is a mostly female affair but I’m not sure Bennett likes women much, considering the humiliations he inflicts upon them. Miss Fozzard was a lonely soul, caring for her brother after he suffered a stroke. The only bright spots in her routine were regular visits to the chiropodist. When he retired, she began seeing a new one who turned out to be in the right profession for a man with a foot fetish. By the end, he was paying Miss Fozzard for her time. “I suppose there’s a word for what I’m doing but I skirt round it,” she said, with the hint of a smile.
The set dressing was peculiar. The script had Miss Fozzard trapped in an earlier era, working in the kind of elegant, old-fashioned department store that bit the dust decades ago, yet her furniture and furnishings were too modern for her character.
There were calls for this episode to be cancelled (in the traditional sense of the word) owing to the presence of Peake, who was recently cancelled (in the newfangled sense of the word) over her comments about Israel. That would have been silly. But the BBC might have been wise to weed out the plays that no longer work.
Mrs America ★★★
Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads ★★