The Village; Kate Adie's Women of World War One; Scotland Votes; Boomers – TV review
|
Version 0 of 1. The Village (BBC1) | iPlayer Kate Adie's Women of World War One (BBC2) | iPlayer Scotland Votes (BBC2) | iPlayer Boomers (BBC1) | iPlayer Surely it's far too early in the glittering career of Juliet Stevenson for consignment to dowagerhood, with all that entails: a good stab at damedom, several nice garden parties and, à la Maggie Smith, a requirement to basically stop acting. Anyone who remembers Ms Stevenson in Truly Madly Deeply – howling and bawling gobbets of phlegmy snot at her bereavement, sending prickled hairs rising – will want to howl as well. Do not go gently into that antimacassar'd twilight. I bring this up only because something terribly strange happened last week to the second season of The Village, the BBC's big Sunday-night offering from the pen of Peter Moffat. Last year's season was dark, dank, miserable – too unrelentingly so, said many, though there were some murmurs of appreciation for the ambitious truth-telling of life in a Derbyshire village in the early part of the last century. The consensus was: a good fist, but for pity's sake wipe the cow-filth off the lens and ask Maxine Peake to risk a smile. What has happened is that they've gone way, way too far with the jazz-hands and turned this, which should have been the antidote to Downton, into Downton. So we get Stevenson's character, Lady Allingham, reduced almost wholly to double entendres. To stress that we've moved on to the roaring 20s after the Grand Guignol of 1914-18, she wonders archly: "Does one pronounce it cocktail, or cocktail?" In case we were left in any tomato-tomato confusion, she lathered it up for the benefit of simperers. "I mean, is it cock… tail, or" – dear sweetmint juleps, she wasn't going to go through with this sentence to the death, was she? Yes, she was – "cock… tail?" Laughter tinkled, inexplicably. Then she asked, again archly, how someone preferred their sausage dealt with. It was like watching Sarah Millican in a paste tiara. Even worse served was Julian Sands, playing a cartoon posho of such exaggerated villainry that he was reduced at one stage, in the absence of freedom to act, to the freedom to express his frustration by kicking the stool away from under a dawdling yokel. It was admittedly a distant camera shot, but you still fancied you could see said ancient yokel-actor being palpably shocked, and hugely rethinking (if not offering actual off-set violence to) that nice Mr Sands. There was a young, kind, principled, handsome black boxer who refused to throw a bout and was told to sling his hook by his corrupt rat-faced cur of an exploitative manager: to be precise, sent packing from the tent naked, to predictable frissons of giggletude from the ladyfolk. Maxine Peake smiled, in a warm breeze. Little pink rabbits gambolled o'er blue-remember'd hills. This is all much more watchable, certainly, but for the type of person who requires their books to come with pictures and their trousers with instruction. Welcome to the new BBC Sunday-night demographic. Basically ITV's but without that station's rough integrity – ITV has always known who it's pleasing. Kate Adie's Women of World War One reminded us, in timely fashion, of the extraordinary feelings of short-lived liberty experienced by women in the first world war. We all knew this story, generally, but this careful retelling, with wit and impact, was invaluable. It showed how the suffragettes, who months earlier would have scalped themselves rather than rescind their claim on the universal franchise, rolled over patriotically, changing their slogan, "Deeds Not Words", to "For King, For Country, For Freedom". It was meant to be "for the duration", but they found their postwar emancipation horribly diluted. Only female home-owners over 30 got the vote. Quite how comfortably this appeasement sat with the largely upper-middle-class echelons of the movement remains an awkward question. Undeniable, however, were the working-class freedoms experienced by women in those four male-free years. There were dangers, yes, especially for the "canary girls" working with TNT, which turned them, and their insides, turmeric-yellow; but delights, too, not least pennies in the pouch and the ability to spend them – and have fun. (Thus engendering moral panic, two words that sadly seem to have withered little in the ensuing century.) Freedom, too, for women to play football, and here we heard about Bella Reay, who netted 133 goals for Blyth Spartans Munitions Girls in one season, watched by crowds upwards of 20,000; and to train as doctors. One publication, only one, the Dorchester Chronicle, celebrated this mid-war as "the dawning of a new eve of womankind, and therefore of the human race". Big chops to the Chronicle, but it had jumped too many guns. Postwar, women were ordered back to the hearth, "to sew, to mend, to cook, to clean, and to rear babies in health and in happiness". Women's football was banned by the FA. The visionary Elsie Inglis, who wanted female doctors to be allowed to treat men, had earlier been told "Dear lady: go home and sit still." (Fortunately, her name now lives on with more prominence than that of her co-respondent.) The pipe-dream was over. What Ms Adie failed to tackle, and only because it's such a gargantuan question, was why it was that feminism took a good 50 years to be reborn. Andrew Neil sought, in Scotland Votes, a nicely turned programme that should surely have been aired months ago, to warn the UK of the Very Big Questions that its sleepwalking towards a Yes vote in Scotland would pose. This was a crucial hour, a vital one, its importance only mildly diminished by the fact that said vote was looking, at least last week, less likely. What I personally took from it was the gulf of difference in tone between the debate north of the border – I was there last week and it's incredibly nuanced, subtle, spiced and wise in the main – and south, which appeared to comprise 1) Kent beachgoers moaning about grasping Jockos and telling us to bugger off into the mist, or 2) wiser voices, Billy Bragg and Simon Jenkins mainly, trying belatedly, almost angrily, to get to grips with what a new "England" might mean. Andrew's belief was beggared by the fact that there had been so little contingency planning in event of Yes, and mine too. The question for me, the question for years to come now, is: what is England to become? Who is England? At least Scotland now knows, pretty much, and sits comfy in its raddled, jaggy, clever skin. Boomers, a comedy-by-numbers thing set in Norfolk and apparently phoned in by a pig's bladder on a stick, is about comfortably-off fiftysomething baby-boomers going through non-crises. It features Nigel Planer, Alison Steadman and Russ Abbot, and diminishes all of them. |