aka BBC1 Autumn treats (part 2)
Yesterday, I cast my eye over the upcoming bundle of drama being unleashed by Auntie over the next few months on BBC1, and deemed it to be very promising indeed. Today, prepare to have your funny bone tickled by a new selection of comedy… Or not, as the case may be.
First up we have a couple of returns, not least of all an hour-long Christmas special for The Royle Family. Caroline Ahearne’s fantastically realised classic has been away long enough to have new things to say, but at the same time it will have to earn its keep and be bang on the money to be truly successful. Ricky Tomlinson is one of my TV heroes, so it should be good to have Jim Royle back on his rightful TV throne… So to speak.
Less welcome is The Green Green Grass. After a promising start, this Only Fools… spin off petered out into a fairly pedestrian affair. John Sullivan can dash out top-drawer comedy at the drop of a hat, but something about this just didn’t quite gel. Sit-com royalty Paula (Man About the House) Wilcox joins John Challis and Sue Holderness as Marlene’s flighty sister, Pertunia. I’m hoping The Green Green Grass has the legs to develop into a solid comedy during this second run.
In what could be an exercise to nurture possible new series, five one off comedy-dramas will crop up across the season…
Aftersun. Sarah Parish and Peter Capaldi as a married couple on holiday who find they have nothing to talk about. The acting pedigree is good (Parish seems to work tirelessly and Capaldi is hot thanks to The Thick of It), so as long as the couple don’t realise at the end that they really do love each other, this sounds promising.
Former Peter Kay foil Dave Spikey pens Magnolia, starring The Office’s Ralph Ineson as an ex con gone straight,now running a firm of painter and decorators. As the business struggles, will he do a job for his former gangster employees? Spikey is said to be the brains behind the success of Phoenix Nights (his absence from Max and Paddy was telling), although that being said, Dead Man Weds wasn’t great. Definitely one to watch…
In Angel Cake, Sarah Lancashire plays a bun maker whose life changes when a batch of her cakes comes out of the oven bearing a great resemblance to the Virgin Mary. Like the Jane Horrocks drama outing The Amazing Mrs Pritchard, this could be dreadful or the best thing ever.
The Good Housekeeping Guide fills me with foreboding, mainly due to the presence of Alan Davies. I loved Jonathan Creek, but outside the confines of this BBC classic, I find Davies utterly baffling. Here, as a single dad forced into extreme methods of making money, I’m not hopeful for my opinion to change much. Sorry.
Thankfully, to round off the five, somebody has remembered that Lenny Henry is a decent actor, and much better than those tedious sketch shows the BBC insist on crowbarring him into. In Berry’s Way (co-penned by Henry with Kim Fuller), Henry plays Berry Cottrell, a divorced father with a wayward son and ailing dry cleaning business. Enrolling on an Open University course, he sets to prove he can better himself with the assistance his lecturer Charles (the always brilliant Ron Cook). This one could go far…
Elsewhere in the schedules there is the re-teaming of Alexander Armstrong and Ben Miller as a double act in The Armstrong and Miller Show, performing sketch based comedy for the first time in five years. The graduation to BBC1 reflects how the pair have grown career wise in their separate endeavours, so a compare and contrast with their earlier material for Channel 4 might be in order.
Jennifer Saunders pens the ensemble comedy Jam and Jerusalem, starring Sue Johnston, Pauline McLynn and The Wild Wessome minor actors called Joanna Lumley and Dawn French. Never heard of them. Set around a doctor’s surgery in a West Country village, I’m hoping this will be better than The Wild West and the last series of Ab Fab.
Finally, Lee Mack stars in flat share comedy Not Going Out, written by Mack and Andrew Collins, in which flatmates Lee and Megan’s relationship goes from easy friendship into unknown territory. Sleeper hit of the year? Time will tell.
Hmmm can't say that sounds as promsing as the drama line-up, but as you say, Not Going Out could turn out to be great.