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What happened when Nicola Sturgeon met Janey Godley?
COULDN’T get a ticket to the world premiere of Janey at this year’s Glasgow Film Festival? Then have I got (good) news for you. John Archer’s documentary about Janey Godley, Glaswegian comedian and sometime panellist on HIGNFY, transfers to the small screen in
Janey (BBC Scotland, Tuesday, 10pm).
It’s an hour-long version of what was a feature-length film, but in the trimming it has lost none of its power to amuse and move.
“Life had been so well,” says Godley by way of an introduction.
Her TV career was taking off. Fans could not get enough of her Nicola Sturgeon spoof voiceovers during lockdown.
There was a book coming out. Everything was tickety-boo, as her pal Billy Connolly would say.
And then? “First I got cancelled, then I got cancer.” Racist tweets she had sent more than a decade ago surfaced, and suddenly no-one wanted to book Godley any more.
A diagnosis of stage three ovarian cancer followed. Now that is an annus horribilis in anyone’s book.
Instead of pulling the duvet over her head, Godley took a show on the road.
Joining her on the 2023 Not Dead Yet Tour was her daughter and fellow stand-up Ashley Storrie, and Godley’s best pal, Shirley.
Clips from the stage show punctuate a walk through Godley’s life.
Born and brought up in Glasgow’s East End, she has spoken and written before about the traumas of the past, but she does so this time with a particular urgency, perhaps because of her illness.
As Storrie says, her mum has always lived like she is running out of time.
It’s all here, from the infamous sign she carried to “welcome” Donald Trump to Scotland, to the time she was interviewed by Nicola Sturgeon at the Aye Write festival, when the origin of the catchphrase, “Frank, get the door” was revealed.
Archer says she was great to work with and nothing was off limits.
“She is a great collaborator, totally open and happy to make people laugh even about the bleakest moments in her life and there’ve been a few.
“We were also very lucky that Janey has great home videos of her life that have never been seen before, and they really helped us tell her story. I look forward to viewers experiencing Janey in a new light, in what is undoubtedly emotional viewing.”
This is a superbly drawn portrait of one of life’s survivors. Some of the most poignant scenes show Godley and Storrie talking about the future. Storrie is a star in every sense.
Dinosaur, the Glasgow-set sitcom she co-created, is on iPlayer if you missed it.
Rob and Rylan’s Grand
Tour Venice (BBC2, Sunday, 9pm) adds to the already bulging catalogue of celebrity travelogues.
Rob Rinder and Rylan Clark are tracing the steps of many a traveller before them, and in their case one in particular Byron.
What do all three have in common, you might ask? Like R&R, Rylan tells us, the poet had been through a painful and public divorce and hoped travel
would soothe the soul.
If that seems like rather a stretch the viewer can at least console themselves with shots of Venice as the presenter pair tour the city’s famous sights.
How big a Rebus fan are you? Dedicated enough to get up in time for the 6am release of the latest crime drama featuring Ian Rankin’s creation?
If not, you can catch it on
BBC Scotland on Friday, 17 May, 10pm, or on BBC One on Saturday, 18 May.
Adapted by Gregory Burke (Black Watch, ‘71, Six Four), this latest imagining takes the Edinburgh detective back to the days when he was a young DS.
Set against the backdrop of a politically divided Scotland (nothing new under the sun, etc), Rebus has career and family problems weighing him down (nothing new, take two).
Outlander star Richard Rankin is the latest actor to take on the character following stints by
John Hannah and Ken Stott in the ITV series.
As with any character who has had a long life on the page, fans have firm ideas about how Rebus should look.
Fair to say neither Hannah or Stott were accepted as the definitive Rebus, so will Rankin fare any better?
Two weeks in and the new series of The Piano (Channel 4, Sunday, 9pm) is still bedding down.
Now that judges Mika and Lang Lang are no longer hidden from view, the show has lost some of its ability to surprise.
There has not yet been one of the truly magical moments that made the first series such a hit.
This week Claudia Winkleman brings the show to the concourse at Edinburgh Waverley.
I would have thought Waverley a tight fit for the crowds who now turn up to a filming of The Piano.
Maybe the producers managed to find a rare quiet spell amid the usual hectic to and fro.
Outlander star Richard Rankin is the latest actor to take on the character following stints by John Hannah and Ken Stott in the ITV series