Bold, riveting... not bad for a show where nothing happens
Marriage
BBC1, Sunday & Monday ★★★★★ Bad Sisters
Apple TV, Friday ★★★★★
The latest drama from Stefan Golaszewski, who wrote the entirely sublime Mum, is Marriage, and it has certainly divided people. It’s the most boring thing I’ve ever seen, say some. It’s like watching paint dry, say others. Is it even drama, some have questioned. But elsewhere you’ll have read that it’s wonderful, unbelievably bold and riveting.
I would like to say that there is no right or wrong opinion here, each to their own, but I can’t as it is plainly wonderful, unbelievably bold and riveting. It’s a show where nothing appears to happen but, in fact, everything happens, rather than the plot-driven, architect-design-house melodramas we are usually fed, where you could say everything happens but nothing does. I fell on this like a starved dog.
This stars Sean Bean and Nicola Walker, so that’s two excellent reasons to watch right there. I could be mesmerised by Sean Bean stacking the dishwasher, or Nicola Walker refilling the bird-feeder, or the pair of them shopping at B&Q, which is helpful, as sometimes that’s all a scene is. But let’s be clear: under the surface it was all going on.
They play Ian and Emma, married for 27 years, returning from holiday in Spain and bickering about the ‘jacket potayta’ he had wanted in the airport cafe that only did chips. ‘Did you ask them for a jacket potayta?’, he keeps grumbling at her. But he’s a nervous flyer, and once on their flight he reaches for her hand, which is there, ready and waiting. There is irritation but also care, friendship, closeness, kindness. This may not be the most exciting love story ever told but it is the truest.
They return to their not architect-designed house, in a satellite town somewhere. There are long silences. There’s the house admin. Will he collect the parcel that’s been left with a neighbour or will she? But slowly you pick up on all that’s below the surface. He’s just been made redundant. He is lonely, with whole days to fill, and lingers around a young woman working at his gym for rather too long. (Oh my lord, I so cringed throughout that.) Emma works in a high-street solicitor’s office and has a revolting boss. Her father (James Bolam) is spiteful. They visit the cemetery and weep on a bench for the baby son they lost. Bean was astonishing here, playing a man crying who is also trying not to cry.
Their adult daughter, Jessica (Chantelle Alle), brings her new boyfriend to dinner. They have steak and ‘jacket potayta’. (Finally!) The new boyfriend is controlling and toxic, but Ian and Emma say nothing because they don’t know how to discuss this with her. They don’t have the words. They’re not the kind of people who do. That was just the first episode, and you can say nothing happened?
There are four episodes, with another two next week, but it’s all available on iPlayer and I galloped through them in a single sitting. It did have narrative propulsion.
Would Jessica wise up to her boyfriend? Would Emma give her boss the dressingdown he deserves? Where would Ian’s jealousy lead? This is bold. Even the jolting, discordant theme tune – Caroline Shaw’s acapella Partita For 8 Voices – is bold, but haven’t you had enough of tinkly pianos and soaring violins? And it’s so true to life that I now can’t say anything in our house without wondering if it’s an Ian-ism or an Emma-ism. In fact, ‘Should we have chicken tonight?’ is what I said just now. An Emma-ism, I think.
Alas, I watched Bad Sisters, which is made by Sharon Horgan’s production company, after Marriage, and it may have suffered in comparison. It’s a dark comedy drama adapted from a Flemish series but now set in Ireland, and while it had its moments – there’s a wonderfully funny one right at the beginning – it’s back to heavy plotting and Grand Designs-style houses, so a little something inside me died. I watched the first two episodes (of ten), and I may watch more but don’t feel any particular urgency.
It begins with an open casket and a corpse suffering from post-death priapism, which made me laugh, I have to say. We know the man is John Paul, husband of Grace (AnneMarie Duff), one of the five Garvey sisters. The four others are played by Horgan, Eve Hewson, Sarah Greene and Eva Birthistle, so this has a stunning cast too.
John Paul is said to have died in a ‘grisly accident’, but from the outset we know that his sisters-in-law murdered him. Via flashbacks we see he was an abusive monster who had sucked the life out of Grace. There’s a Christmas scene where he’s racist, misogynistic, and worse, all at once, and you did wonder: these are not characters who don’t have the words. These sisters are bolshie and spirited but they don’t say anything? They don’t throw him out of the house?
The deal is: we don’t know how they killed him and, not being accomplished murderers, we see how their first attempt went horribly wrong. Meanwhile there are two insurance guys sniffing around because they don’t want to have to pay out on John Paul’s life-insurance policy. It’s watchable. But I can’t say it’s like the body wash Ian will ask for in the supermarket. That is ‘revitalising’.