Sons and Lovers ITV1
Happiness BBC2
No Going Back C4
Buried C4
Though ostensibly a Sarah Lancashire vehicle, the lush and lovely ITV1 Hovis ad(aptation) that was Sons and Lovers as good as gave up on its star halfway through. During Sunday night's first two-hour dose, Lancashire's Gertrude Morel was called upon to be stoic, light-hearted, put-upon and despairing by turns - stuff she invariably pulls off with Streepish verisimilitude - but, sadly, by Monday her role had been reduced to a pursed-lipped, brow-furrowed, curdled and liver-spotted caricature of middle-aged maternal neuroses.
Still, she had a better time of it compared to poor Hugo Speer, a fine actor arguably miscast but certainly squandered as Gertrude's ineffectual drunkard of a spouse, Walter. By the end, Speer was reduced to muttering lines like 'Well, I'll just be going, luv... ' before heading for the pub, Andy Capp in-hand. For offering up a performance so devoid of ego, Speer is to be applauded. Trouble is, he's also a sex god and I prefer my sex gods satyr-like and strutting rather than a-stoop and shuffling.
None the less, as a cautionary, Oedipally-charged tale about the emotionally consuming business of motherhood, Sons and Lovers hit many of the right notes (particularly for this mother of a six-month-old son who will, if I have anything to do with it, never touch a drop of alcohol, sniff an illegal substance or have sexual relations with anybody ever...) and much of the credit for this must go to Rupert Evans, who overcame the handicap of boy-band-bland good looks to make the occasionally slappable mummy's boy Paul Morel a delicately drawn and empathetic character as he struggled to choose from among Ma, the feisty suffragette with the hairy armpits and the frigid farmgirl with the collagen lips, but finally settled for his art.
One small criticism of what was otherwise a very overdue dramatic triumph for ITV1, however: Little Girls Playing With Hoops are to be seen in nearly every period-drama street scene, whatever the period, wherever the street, and while I appreciate that wee Edwardians did not have access to an X-Box, there must have been some other toys - or that nice lady from Antiques Roadshow would never have had a career telling people that unfortunately their battered teddy isn't a Steiff that was once owned by a Romanov princeling and now worth 50 grand. Not only do modern little girls not have a clue how to play with them (you also need a stick, I believe, though here the small extras just skipped around clutching their hoops as if they were particularly duff prototype-Beanie Babies) but the biggest cock-up-a-hoop came during a scene set on a very pebbly beach. Unless little Edwardian girls loved their hoops as much as little Elizabethans love Gareth Gates, then this was surely a bit of an historical whoops.
BBC2's excellent Happiness returned for a second series last week and might just be Britain's first realitycom. Without the usual Tourette's laughter track, the characters are given the space metaphorically to sit back, pick their noses, scratch their private parts, sigh a lot and demonstrate all the personality tics of confused early-middle-aged melancholics.
Last week Whitehouse's not particularly bright, not wildly successful, not very good-looking and not obviously entertaining Danny, was trying to charm his way through a first date with observations about the dangers of ordering mussels ('You get a wrong one and you'll be on the khazi shitting and puking for days on end...') before completely blowing it by not liking Miles Davis and using hair-in-a-tin to cover up his bald patch, though solace was later to be found by snogging his best friend's wife. There was also a guest cameo from Kathy Burke, cleverly subverting her likeableness by playing herself as a gorblimey-diva.
Though partly a 30-minute ode to Paul Whitehouse's own midlife crisis, it's infinitely better and bitterer than the inexplicably popular My Family (first and most amusingly screened as Butterflies, of course). Admittedly there are not many people I'd trust to entertain me with a confection of their own miserableness, but Whitehouse's gloom-ridden Everynavel-gazing is wincingly truthful. And of course there's also Johnny Vegas who, professionally, owes at least as much to Whitehouse as he does to that monkey. Nobody does pointlessness more poignantly than Vegas.
Variations on the theme of the mid-life crisis are presumably what drives the protagonists of C4's addictive No Going Back to make their great big escapist lifestyle leaps. In this series of Reality Property-Shock-Docs, one pleasant youngish family after another capitalises on rising house prices by trading in their semis and terraces in Leeds or west London or Kent for some sort of sunny continental dream home in Tuscany, Brittany or Provence.
Whether the relationship is with an Italian olive grove or a French lakelet full of carp, all the families start their journeys optimistically, wide-eyed and weak-kneed with lust before swiftly waking up to the reality of their situation and then, just before the credits roll, falling back in love with the objects of their particular desires, having learned a few lessons along the way. And in addition to enjoying this satisfying dramatic arc, viewers get to look at lovely houses in fetching parts of the world and debate whether or not they've also got the bottle to move to a finca in Andalucia. But then just as you're getting comfy with the premise, along comes a sobering horror story which makes a maisonette in Little Festering look like the most desirable destination of a lifetime.
Mac the illustrator, Laura the make-up artist and their two cute kids exchanged their £850,000 semi in Chiswick, west London, for a vast castellated spread on the Côte d'Azur, with two swimming pools, two acres of gardens, various guest cottages and sea views, all for £450,000. Here Mac planned to set up painting holidays for Brits, while Laura would swap her blusher brushes for a Magimix. As they signed the deeds, Mac generously offered to paint the vendor a watercolour of the house, for old times sake. Thanks but no thanks, said the old guy, wiping away a tear. Too many memories, perhaps.
The first few weeks were idyllic and then it all went so hideously wrong that I couldn't find it in me to enjoy even the teensiest bit of Schadenfreude. As the central heating system was pronounced dangerous, the pool's filter system backfired, the waste pipes from the guest cottages were discovered to be unconnected to the mains and thus depositing sewage in the garden, the pool patio turned out not to be waterproof when a heavy rainstorm destroyed the work they'd done in the guest rooms underneath... and then, finally, it was revealed that the whole stinking botch might never have had planning permission in the first place, you marvelled at Mac and Laura's on-camera stoicism. But then, after a bit, you also marvelled at their naïvety. They hadn't had a survey done and though £450,000 is a lot of cash, retrospectively this looked like an implausible amount of house - at least a million pounds-worth, perhaps? - for the money.
I hate to say it because they seem like a nice couple, but I think our collective British property greed got the better of them and there's probably no such thing as a bargain to be had on the Côte D'Azur any more than there is one to be had in Chiswick. But Mac and Laura are soldiering on anyway (after all nobody can take away the weather or the Med) and as a result of the show I'll bet bookings will be flooding in even faster than the rainwater. Remember: they're doing it so we don't have to.
To tell the truth I wasn't really in the mood for Buried, Channel 4's... (boy, am I struggling not to write 'gritty', but - fair cop - it's a struggle I'm prepared to give up) gritty new Oz-style prison drama. When you've spent six months watching Big Strong Boys and Trading Up and Bargain Hunt and Housecall and Passport to the Sun, you have to ease yourself gently back into uncompromising prison dramas unleavened by either laughs or appearances by Craig-who-won-Big Brother-1 and now combines panto appearances with creative usage of MDF on daytime makeover shows.
But I'm glad I stuck it out because there was some very taut writing and a strong ensemble cast, while Lennie James was nothing short of outstanding as a decent man (own business, mortgage, nice wife, daughter called Emily) turned lifer after having shot the man who raped his sister. In scheduling terms, 10.30pm on a Tuesday means Buried is pretty much six feet under, but while not exactly a ratings-grabber it's still very worthwhile telly, so give it a chance.
And next week there's a Poliakoff drama to look forward to. Ooh, it's good to be back.
