90 minutes of pure genius – and not a football in sight!
Together Thursday, BBC2 Horizon Special: The Vaccine Wednesday, BBC2
Television his week was mostly not a bl e for t he wall - t o - wall football, which was trying. Ideally, I’d be a football widow, left to get on with other things, but the football watchers in this house always want to explain the offside rule by shifting condiments around. Honestly, how many times can you say: ‘Stop it! I really don’t care! Put the malt vinegar away!’
Meanwhile, elsewhere, there was the launch of GB News, the first new television news service for 24 years, which I watched for only a few brief moments, but that did pay off. An interview with Michael Gove from Parliament Square was especially gripping as it happened to catch a woman exercising in the background. I have no idea what he s a i d but , my goodness, her r e verse lunges were superb.
Anyway, I wish this new channel nothing but good luck with its mission to provide an alternative to ‘ mainstream’ media and give voice to those who so often go unheard, like Nigel Farage and Sir Alan Sugar. It’s about time such shy wallflowers were given a voice. They must have been so frustrated up until now.
On to Together, for those of us who weren’t watching Holland v Austria on Thursday night, and I can promise you I wasn’t. This was a ‘pandemic drama’ about one couple in lockdown, from which I’m still reeling. It was riveting and outstandingly nasty but with, alas, something recognisable at its core (says the person who lives with someone who wants her to imagine the pepper grinder is the goalie. Plus never leaves the dishwasher open, or closed, but always half-open, resting on i ts hinges. W h a t ’s that about?).
Together was written by the playwright Dennis Kel l y and directed by Stephen Daldry (Billy Elliot). It opened on the first day of lockdown and went through to this spring, following a couple – played by Sharon Horgan and James McAvoy – who hate each other and now can’t escape each other.
We first meet them in their kitchen as they are unpacking groceries and he says they’d have split up years ago if it weren’t for their young son. He says: ‘The truth is, we can’t stand each other’ and she says: ‘this lockdown, being in the same house, together, me and him…’ They talk over each other. They interject. Or they talk to us, self-justifyingly. He continues with: ‘The only thing that makes living with her even remotely bearable is knowing I get to leave the house every day… it’s the best part of my day.’
This scene ended with him saying: ‘I hate your face’ and her likening him to cancer. It was dark, angry, bitter, packed with rage, a n d wo u l d h a v e b e e n u n wa t c h a b l y unrelenting had it not been for the humour – there’s a very funny scene where they discuss the resumption of their sex life – and had it not, ultimately, been compassionate. Horgan, who is mostly known as a comic actress, fully earned her serious chops here with monologues on her mother’s Covid death – she had to pull up in a layby and watch her die in hospital via Facetime; this was as spellbinding as it was unbearable – and on the true meaning of ‘exponential,’ which I will now never forget.
So it wasn’t just the diabolical truth-telling, even though that was rather thrilling. ‘I think you have all the charm of diarrhoea in a pint glass’ she tells him at one point. Somehow, Kelly managed t o pack considerable character work into 90 minutes so they both – they are never named – have an arc, as measured through his behaviour towards a worker in Tesco Extra and what actually happened on that mushroom-picking trip. (Unlike Uncle Bryn’s fishing trip with Jason in Gavin & Stacey, say, we do find out).
Both performances were dazzling, but I’m still not sure what we were meant to take away from it. Their son lurks throughout, dressed as a dinosaur, or flicking yogurt at a window, but they don’t properly engage until the final moments. Because they’ve learnt to put their selfish narcissism aside? Is ‘the love that exists beyond hate’ especially ‘beautiful’, as claimed? I’ll have to chew that over. Once I’ve stopped reeling.
Horizon Special: The Vaccine ventured across five continents as it followed the scientists racing to develop a viable Covid vaccine, whether it be the Moderna one, the Pfizer one, or Oxford/AstraZeneca (which is known as the ‘Vauxhall Astra’ in this house, when we’re not otherwise engaged in trying to kill each other. (What is so hard about putting a plate in the dishwasher and then closing it?).
Perhaps I’d been spoilt by the vaccination episode from the BBC’s recent documentary series A Short History Of Living Longer, which told the history of vaccines so excitingly, with many human stories.
Clearly, developing a vaccine in a matter of months is an incredible achievement, but this lacked that human element, relying instead on graphics and talking heads, which made it all so dry. The most interesting part was the failed Australian vaccine, if only because the lead scientist was so crushed. And now I’m off to watch the football…joke! I’m off to close the dishwasher properly, more like.