A sexy, mesmerising binge watch. But not with the kids
As the BBC’s much-anticipated but not-much-enjoyed A Suitable Boy limps on – the audience dropped from 4.6 million for the first episode to 3.4 million for the second – your best bet this week had to be jumping ship to Sky for Little Birds, but I can’t think of a single reason why because there are so many. It’s modern. It’s fresh. It’s sexy. It’s visually stunning. It’s superbly acted. It’s daring. It’s different. Enough to be getting on with? I could continue. It’s camp. It’s witty. It’s highly stylised. It’s luscious. The colours will blow your mind. And I could still go on. But won’t. I know when to stop. Sometimes.
With a screenplay by Sophia Al-Maria, and directed by Stacie Passon, this is based on the collection of erotic short stories by Anaïs Nin. Loosely. My parents had a copy knocking about when I was growing up, I don’t know why. They weren’t terribly erotic, my parents. My father played golf. My mother washed up coffee filter papers, to be used again. (One paper would last a year. Approx.) But it’s how I learned about sex (thanks, Mum; thanks, Dad) and I was wondering: how would you adapt it for TV? How? When the stories aren’t even interconnected?
I now know: loosely. Very. This isn’t about replicating the book but capturing the essence of it and, in particular, capturing the essence of a group of characters propelled by their desires and capturing the essence of a particular place at a particular time. That is, Tangier, 1955, one of the last colonial outposts as Morocco stood on the brink of independence. It’s a place in flux. It’s a place of hedonism and decadence and experimentation and darkness and conflict. And you get all that. Brilliantly. This is original, but if pressed I’d say it most put me in mind of Cabaret. And there is no higher compliment, truly.
The main character is Lucy (Juno Temple), a rich, naive American socialite controlled by her daddy, an arms dealer, and the (mad) psychiatrist who keeps her drugged. Lucy longs for her own independence. Had this been an Andrew Davies adaptation she’d have probably said: ‘I long for my own independence’, before meeting a man she shouldn’t for a dreary, early-morning boat trip. But this is much more out there than that. This shows rather than tells. So, in her bedroom in the family’s swish New York apartment, we see her lip-syncing slinkily to Eartha Kitt’s I Wanna Be Evil. (‘I wanna be evil/I wanna be mad/but more than that I wanna be bad.’) Says it all. Her bedroom, meanwhile, i s sensationally turquoise. There’s a heightened colourscape throughout. The violets! You could watch each episode just for the colours and come away happy, I think.
The plot, such as it is: Lucy is dispatched to Tangier to marry an impoverished English lord (Hugh Skinner). She travels by boat, and this trip isn’t dreary as it’s where she meets a singer (played by Nina Sosanya), whom I mention because she delivers the most astonishing speech about death and sex. (Don’t watch this with your kids.) On arrival, Lucy marries Hugo but discovers he is sexually indifferent to her. We know it’s because he’s gay and has a lover, but she doesn’t. Yet. The other main character is Cherifa (Yumna Marwan), a dominatrix and ‘Queen of the Whores’ who has a gold tooth and specialises in S&M. (Again: don’t watch with the kids.) She is mesmerising. But then everyone is mesmerising. As is the whole thing. There are six episodes and you can watch weekly or they’re now all available. Up to you. (Binge it!)
Now, to other matters. The documentary Everything:
The Real Thing Story paid tribute to the group whose You To Me Are Everything was the soundtrack to that hot summer of 1976. It was No. 1 for three weeks – they were the first black British band to occupy the top spot – and sold 600,000 copies although not to me, as I probably recorded it from the radio onto a cassette tape. (Sorry, lads.)
This was not a groundbreaking documentary. It was the usual. Talking heads. Old footage. But it was still absorbing as the surviving band members – Dave, Chris, Eddie; Ray, alas, died from a heroin overdose 20 years ago – recollected. They were all from the Toxteth area of Liverpool. They recalled their early breaks in the business – offered by the likes of The Beatles and David Essex – and also the racism that was systemic in the British music industry at that time. There was much I had no idea about, like the fact they appeared in The Stud, or how their follow-up to Everything, the more socially conscious Children Of The Ghetto, perplexed their teenage, white, girl fans.
If you remember that summer, and if you remember taping from radio to cassette, there was much to enjoy here. But no, not innovative. Or original. Or modern. Or fresh. Unlike some other shows I could mention. But won’t.