Hope Springs
BBC 1
Ladies Of Letters
ITV 1
Krod Mandoon And The Flaming Sword Of Fire
BBC 2
It’s a fitting title – the new BBC drama series Hope Springs does represent the triumph of hope over recent experience. After the end of Life On Mars and Hotel Babylon, the BBC hasn’t had much in the way of light drama hits lately. Or should that be drama with its tongue in its cheek? Anyway, you know what I mean. It’s a very tricky genre to pull off. Gazing enviously at popular ITV shows such as Bad Girls and Footballers’ Wives, BBC executives decided to steal the writing team to bring some of this escapist flim-flam to their Sunday evening schedule. Sadly, the result is a rather uneasy hybrid of BBC cosiness and ITV sleaze.
Don’t get me wrong – unlike some critics I won’t write off any new comedy or drama just because it stars female protagonists. The more of this the better, in my book. But something or someone seems to have nobbled the show’s writers during the channel crossing and it shows in the resulting script. It doesn’t seem to know how seriously to take itself – whether to play up the gangster menace and murderous subplot or go in for soppy gestures like girls being afraid of sheep and fancying the local lads. Just to recap: a gang of female criminals get out of jail and pull a fast one on the treacherous husband of gang leader Ellie (Alex Kingston). They are just about to skip the country with several million pounds when the plan goes pear-shaped and they end up taking refuge at the inn at a remote Scottish village. There follows much fish-out-of-water jokiness – said scary sheep, time-warped hotel rooms, quirky local characters. However, the writers have lost the confident vulgarity of Bad Girls, offering us instead girls who are slightly naughty but with a jolly good excuse. I say: go for it, let’s have some proper wicked women to rival the boys. I shall keep an eye on Hope Springs just in case it picks up, but don’t hold out much hope.
Ladies Of Letters is a bit of an odd fish. Female protagonists: good; monologues to camera: not so sure about that. This series began life as a Radio 4 series and it shows. Perhaps the BBC couldn’t see its televisual potential and allowed ITV to Hoover it up – another example of the two channels swapping jerseys after the match. Anyway, Anne Reid and Maureen Lipman lend their usual satirical charm to these two suburban monsters, but I wonder if the programme will hold my attention for a 10-week run, even at 30 minutes a throw.
And so to the latest BBC populist wheeze: Krod Mandoon And The Flaming Sword Of Fire. Never mind pinching writers from ITV, this time the BBC has crossed the Atlantic in search of fresh blood. This UK-US co-production brings us writer Peter Knight, who is apparently a great fan of British comedy. He claims to have been aiming for a comedy drama along the lines of Blackadder and Red Dwarf, with just a splash of Monty Python. But his script reminds me more of early Mel Brooks, mixing epic costumed pretension with nerdy office speak and modern slang.
So we have British ex-soap star Sean Maguire striding about in his sword and sandal gear, displaying his muscular six-pack and declaring: “My name is Krod and I’ll be your liberator for tonight”. His quest to free his nation from oppressive tyrant Dongalor (a sparky Matt Lucas) takes place in sort of ancient fantasy landscape redolent of Middle Earth and the realm of Conan The Barbarian.
Krod is aided by a crew of inept and self-consciously un-PC stereotypes including a nymphomaniac pagan girl, a camp gay Hispanic, a dopey English troll and a boastfully useless black wizard. Does it work? Not really. British and American comedy do not seem to mix, however much each side may admire the other.
One thing does remain resolutely American, though: the unwritten Hollywood rule that every hero must have an American accent (even played by a British actor) and every evil genius must be played by a Brit. Don’t you just hate that?
Helen Chappell
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