Kind, supportive and funny, Sewing Bee is a pure delight
For the television equivalent of a palate cleanse – after sitting through Channel 4’s Open House: The Great Sex Experiment last week, I was in desperate need of one – there is The Great British Sewing Bee (BBC One) A lovely, good-natured programme, which is sometimes exactly what is required. It is made by the same production company as The Great British Bake Off, but where that show has become a bit too full of itself, Sewing Bee remains a pure delight.
The contestants have diverse backgrounds. No, don’t run away! I mean that they have very different life stories, but are united by a love of sewing. Gillie instantly became my favourite, a smiley and well-spoken retiree who was once “a Saturday girl at this wonderful fashion house on Boulevard Saint-germain”. Tony R left a high-powered job in manufacturing to become a skateboarding postman in Cornwall, which is worthy of a newspaper feature in itself.
And all are marvellous adverts for making one’s own clothes. “My body shape has always been a bit larger and it’s definitely liberating to make things. I can make anything fit me. It makes you feel good about yourself and that’s how everybody should feel,” said Vicki, a police dispatcher who didn’t look at all large to me. Gillie was “a product of the Sixties, so I cut my teeth making shift dresses. You could run something up in an afternoon and wear it that evening.”
(Incidentally, despite reports that Girlguiding has become terribly woke and abandoned wholesome pastimes, my 10-year-old returned from a meeting last week with a sewing kit and her first attempt at macrame. She also toasts marshmallows around the campfire and makes nice artwork about the Royal family. So no need for alarm just yet.)
This show started off with Claudia Winkleman as host, then Joe Lycett, and since last year it has been Sara Pascoe. She is a supportive presence, which is the main thing required here; the fewer rubbish jokes, the better. Patrick Grant and Esme Young are back as judges, with kind words and praise for everyone. They’re gently funny without it being forced. When Esme says, “I love a gusset,” in a conversation about big knickers, it’s rather endearing. Even when the judges point out things that have gone wrong – a frayed French seam, or a sleeve the wrong way round – it is without a hint of nastiness. When Catherine’s design went wrong, Patrick gave her a hug and said: “It’s ok, these things happen.” Which is a good way to approach life in general, isn’t it?
The comparisons between new Apple TV+ comedy Platonic and When Harry Met Sally are so obvious – it’s about the relationship between two fast-talking friends, one male and one female, who have known each other for decades – that the script references it within the first 15 minutes. Except the fun in Nora Ephron’s film came from the will-they-won’t-they between Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal. In Platonic, the leads really are just friends. Without the prospect of romance, what exactly is it?
Well, it’s a sitcom with echoes of Seth Rogen’s 2007 film, Knocked Up. Will and Sylvia (Rogen and Rose Byrne) are former bosom buddies who fell out years ago when Sylvia said she didn’t like the woman Will was about to marry. They reconnect after Will’s marriage ends, and goof around as they rediscover the kind of fun they had as twentysomethings, before work (him) and family (her) began taking up all of their time.
Rogen plays the same sort of schlubby guy as his character in Knocked Up, only now he has a job running a brewery and he wears very bad outfits. Sylvia is a former lawyer, now a bored stay-at-home mother. She is at that stage of life where she can’t quite believe she’s in her forties while displaying all the signs of reaching her forties, like going to a bar and being annoyed that the music is loud and there’s nowhere to sit.
There is potential here. Set pieces can be enjoyably silly, and some of the comedy is nicely observed. But mostly the writing feels too smug. Will has a little rant at the idea that women are the mellower sex: “Margaret Thatcher, she was a f---ing a--hole. That Cara Delevingne, she seems like a f---ing mess.” The aimless dialogue only serves to highlight that the plot is going nowhere, and that these two find themselves far more hilarious than we do.
And then there’s the inconvenient truth. “Men and women don’t really hang out together at our age,” Sylvia tells her husband. But I can’t help feeling that the reason Will likes having Sylvia for a best friend is because she’s as gorgeous as Rose Byrne.
The Great British Sewing Bee ★★★★ Platonic ★★