My Last Summer; Happy Valley; In the Flesh; A Very British Airline – review
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Version 0 of 1. My Last Summer (C4) | 4oD Happy Valley (BBC1) | iPlayer In the Flesh (BBC3) | iPlayer A Very British Airline (BBC2) | iPlayer "It would make a better television programme if one of us died." Such is the media-savvy cynicism – or refreshing brute honesty – these days that these words evinced not shock but knowing nods from the group. Of which Ben, 57, recently diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer, was the most reclusive character – no partner, no children, few friends, which is a surprise because he was laconically hilarious. And, true, it might have made a better programme, but I'm joyous that none of them has, yet, died. My Last Summer was an ever-uplifting programme, and one of the best things Channel 4 has done for many moons. The premise was simple, if undoubtedly hard to set up: take a small group of terminally ill people and allow them to spend the "last" – it's a movable feast, stuff happens – six months of their lives in a rather nice country home with each other, far from the beseeching and sometimes spurious "care" delivered by supposed friends and family. And boy, did they have fun with that one, giggling and bitching to each other about others' need for them to be more normal – "but you look so well, darling," mimicked Jayne, 58, the poshest and most exuberant of the lot. "Well, would you rather I was all pale and spreadeagled, would that make you happier?" There was shared recognised hilarity at the endless capacity of the well to say precisely the wrong thing, or change the subject with grinding gears. Instead, they were all free to make bad black jokes, shout carefree goodnights with offers of drugs, and carefully, sanely, explore options and tend to each other without crashing insensitivity. But there were, of course, quiet heartaches. Jayne's husband met her news that she was about to go and get her test results (breast cancer) with the words: "I've just made a tomato sandwich and I'm doing the crossword." He was, she opined, "suffering from PLOM's Disease – Poor Little Old Me". Later, in a chapel, she quietly broke down. "What a waste of my life. What a lot I had to give." And she did/does. I couldn't help but reflect on the many differences between this crew and those stuck on The Island, which ended last week: four weeks' bickering on a sun-soaked island (with, it turns out, a freshwater supply being supplemented by the ever-adaptable Mr Grylls, whose name must ever now shout "controversy" to producers but not in a good way) – but hardly knowing they were alive. Proof of the dichotomy between the doomed and the undoomed came courtesy of DJ Junior (prostate) and girlfriend Sonia, who came out with such cringeries as: "I do not want to feel the emptiness [when he dies]; I struggle enough as it is" and: "I can't afford to be weak, we can't both be weak." Weak she proved, but humanly so: at least she's sticking with Junior, unlike Jayne's husband, who deserves everything this programme threw at him. A clever, nuanced, fraught and buoyant series, which can teach us hugely: expect barrel-loads of tears and of redemptive, if diminishing, laughter Not sure what the ending of Happy Valley taught us, other than never to live in Hebden Bridge – and, of course, of the supreme quality of female talent out in TV-land today, from Sally Wainwright's writing to Sarah Lancashire's harrowing character arc. The actress moved, under skies flitting between all hues of eggbox-dank, from slab-faced boisterous cop to jolie laide mother and grandmother caught in winsome silhouette, to near-broken bitterness after her beating. After Line of Duty I had doubted whether there would be much competition for next year's Baftas – hindsight is a wonderful thing, as I meant to say yesterday – but Valley, and Lancashire, gave it a gripping run for its dirty money. The plotting was extraordinary, and Wainwright's care with scenes of violence – tell, don't show – just pointed up the gratuitousness with which it's so often managed in more (wilfully?) clumsy hands. In the Flesh has its big ending next Sunday, and I've become hooked. I normally retreat from zombie stuff with the same healthy sense of panic that I will now accord Hebden Bridge, but this tale of Partially Deceased Syndrome, and its "risen" victims' struggles to integrate back into their families, has fascinated. Writer/creator Dominic Mitchell has given us a wholly superior take on the genre, and BBC3, as it moves entirely online, must now rue not having had more of this to serve rather than the ineffable dreck it's been ladling out over much of these 12 years. A start would be to recommission this, if little else. The parallels are all there – distrust of difference, penchant for the mob, love of vicious gossip, cheap showboating, desire for vengeance: basically, most of the worst human traits – but without ever particularly beating us over the head with them. The terrific young cast, particularly Emily Bevan as Amy, deserve far better than to die not once, as has happened already, but twice, through the vicissitudes of the Beeb, with a stakeholder through the heart. There was a negligible fly-on-the-wall thing, A Very British Airline, about BA, notable chiefly for its absence of any characters. British Airways has to supply its own character in the form of a corporate entity that somehow sees fit to urge cabin-crew trainees, on hearing of the failure of one of their number to pass the fiddly but undifficult indenture period, to "feel free to take a few minutes for some quiet time". Whatever happened to I'm Mandy, Fly Me? Man up, Mandy. Only semi-interesting fact: they used years ago to prop up dead passengers "with a vodka and tonic, copy of the Daily Mail, eyeshades. We don't do that now." Thank God. Not everyone likes to be shoehorned into a demographic of enjoying vodka and tonic, even – especially – when dead. |