Mutual Friends
BBC 1
The Last Word Monologues
BBC 1
PERHAPS it’s my problem, but television dramas and situation comedies revolving around the marital problems of middle-class 30 and 40-somethings do nothing for me at all. I must be in a minority, given the success of series such as Thirtysomething and Cold Feet. But I also suspect that many television screenwriters are middle-aged, middle-class chaps with marital problems who feel the need to share them with an audience. Their mid-life crises become easier to bear if they can run them past the viewing public. It’s therapy for them.
Sadly, it’s not therapy for me, so I can’t say I was looking forward to Mutual Friends, the latest offering in this genre. Yes, here we were again, in my-wife-doesn’t-understand-me land, in which one of our two heroes has a wife who had an affair with his (now deceased) best friend and the other is a serial philanderer who keeps trying to cheer up the first hero. As in most of these dramas, the female characters are either long-suffering and annoyingly sensible or bitches who behave with unpredictable hysteria. Anyway, there’s an awful lot of shouting and crying and driving away in cars at great speed.
The only possible attraction for me in this particular series is in the casting: Alexander Armstrong (as the philanderer) and Marc Warren (as the other one) being two of my favourite actors. If these two can’t make something worth seeing out of it, it isn’t worth doing at all. Which, after sitting through the first few episodes of Mutual Friends, is rather what I am wondering about. We shall see. Maybe I’ll give it one more instalment before throwing in the towel, sobbing hysterically and driving off at great speed.
Meanwhile, quieter and more canny pleasures were on offer from Hugo Blick, the author of previously well-received series Marion and Geoff and the Joanna Lumley vehicle Sensitive Skin. In The Last Word Monologues, Blick gave us three little brushes with death. First up we had a rather grim tale with Sheila Hancock as a woman with a crippling disease who was preparing to commit (legalised) suicide. Hancock gave a faultless and affecting performance, of course, but it did feel like Blick lingered too long over her final moments. Did we really need to see her take the pills and expire – even via the distancing device of CCTV? For me, it detracted from her earlier poignant message.
The best monologue was the second in the series, in which Rhys Ifans was subtle and powerful as the closet gay man trapped in a bleak life as a Welsh sheep farmer. Story number three transported us back to the world of The Long Good Friday, with Bob Hoskins again cast as an East End gangster.
This time, Hoskins played an old fashioned hitman, struggling to come to terms with the newly sanitised, corporate-speak world of crime which his public school-educated son was creating for him. A nifty shock ending kept you on your toes.
Wouldn’t it be nice to have more of this sort of drama where scriptwriters take a chance and use a bit of imagination? It may not always work, but I’d prefer it any day to yet another formulaic sitcom/drama where hopeless husbands do battle with bitchy or soggy doormat wives.
Helen Chappell
