I was in the brace position but this was gorgeous, tender TV
My Name Is Leon BBC2, Friday Avoidance BBC1, Friday
If you watched one thing on TV last week, I hope it was My Name Is Leon. Actually, if you watched two things on TV last week, I hope one was Leon as the other, I’m assuming, was Paddington Bear taking tea with the Queen. It’s available widely online and I must have watched it 100 times by now. The moment when Her Majesty takes a marmalade sandwich from her handbag and confides, beaming: ‘For later?’ I’m obsessed with that moment, which always undoes me.
That said, My Name Is Leon also undid me in its way. I had read it was about a child being taken into care, so I steeled myself for it, put my big-girl pants on and adopted the brace position but, surprisingly, it was lovely, warm – and gorgeous too.
Executive-produced by Sir Lenny Henry and based on the 2016 novel by Kit de Waal, this one-off drama starred Cole Martin (terrific, carried the whole 90 minutes with superb naturalism) as Leon, a nine-year-old mixedrace boy growing up in 1980s Birmingham, whose mother has another baby, Jake. (The credits didn’t say who played baby Jake but baby Jake was a corker!)
Leon adores Jake from the get-go. Leon cuddles Jake in the hospital. ‘Hello, little one. Do you know who I am? I’m your big brother.’ Leon is entranced and tells Jake he is like ‘telly’ because ‘I can’t stop looking at you’. But once his mother gets home, she falls into a catatonic depression and, with no other adults present, it’s up to Leon to make Jake’s bottles, change his nappies and entertain him with his Action Man figures. In time, their flat is in a state and the kitchen cupboards are empty. A concerned neighbour alerts social services, which place the brothers in foster care. This is when you imagine it’ll all go downhill. This is when you adopt the brace position. This is when you fill with dread. But the carer, Maureen (a beautiful performance from Monica Dolan, as per), is tender and sensitive, has good biscuits as well as a constant supply of Curly Wurlys, and bonds with Leon immediately. However, heartbreak does indeed come when Jake, who is white, is picked up for adoption and the boys are separated. ‘He needs to be with a family that looks after him properly,’ says the social worker. ‘We are a family and we do look after him properly,’ insists Leon. To no avail.
It is heartbreaking. I was in pieces, I admit. But while this explores grief, loss and anger, the touch was always light. You keenly felt the injustice surrounding those children who get adopted and those who don’t, but this was ultimately about the goodness of the human spirit. And love.
Even Sylvia (Olivia Williams), Maureen’s seemingly monstrous, chain-smoking sister, turned out to have a soft side. While elsewhere, Leon discovered the Caribbean community who congregate at the local allotments, and he grows and flourishes there.
(The metaphor was not lost on me!) He even finds a father figure in Tufty (Malachi Kirby), a protester in the Handsworth riots who teaches Leon what it is to be black.
The ending was, perhaps, a little too tidy, and generic – it takes all sorts to make a family, this said – but it was affecting and you did really, really care about Leon. As for Dolan, who also starred as serial killer Rose West in Appropriate Adult and put-upon Anne in The Thief, His Wife And The Canoe, you may be wondering, as I am: will she ever be cast in a role where she can wear nice clothes? A cardi that isn’t frumpy, say? Would we recognise her if she was?
Avoidance is a new sitcom co-written by Romesh Ranganathan, and starring Ranganathan, but could you call it a comedy? Possibly, but it is also immensely sad. Ranganathan, who describes himself as a ‘conflictavoidant beta-male’, plays the ‘conflict avoidant beta-male’ that is Jonathan. Jonathan goes to a breakfast cafe where they have been getting his order wrong for so long he couldn’t possibly correct them now. That’s Jonathan for you. It drives his wife Claire (Jessica Knappett) mad, and now she has had enough. ‘It’s over,’ she tells him in the opening minutes. ‘You’re right,’ he says, ‘we can take a little break and then can sit down and talk things through.’ ‘Jonathan,’ she shouts, ‘WE ARE NOT TAKING A LITTLE BREAK. IT’S OVER!’
He can’t face up to reality. He certainly can’t face telling his son, Spencer, that his parents are separating, so basically runs away, taking Spencer to his sister’s. ‘It’s just a blip,’ he tells his sister. ‘IT IS NOT A BLIP!’ she tells him. Ranganathan is, it turns out, an excellent actor but, on the basis of having watched the first episode only, I worry where this is going. Jonathan is a great dad and I hope this isn’t about him becoming an ‘alpha male’ or ‘proper man’ or anything like that. There are some funny lines but, mostly, I found it sad.
However, that’s OK, as I know how to cheer myself up: Paddington and the Queen. It never fails.