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| FROM CRADLE TO GRAVE: Laurie Kynaston with Peter Kay and Lucy Speed |
BLIMEY, Britain in the 1970s looked grim, and in From Cradle To Grave (BBC1, Thursday) you could feel the three-day weeks and power cuts coming out of the walls.
The look of the adaptation of Danny Baker’s first volume of autobiography was astonishing, a perfect recreation of a home of the era, with lousy big-patterned wallpaper, Squezy washing-up liquid, tonic trousers, nodding dogs, continental quilts and those funny little knick-knack shelves on the wall.
It also beautifully summed up teenage life in the 1970s with a young Baker played by Laurie Kynaston (a swoonsome young thing, even if he is sporting a mullet haircut), full of angst over girlfriends and wearing the wrong trousers, with a loving family headed by Peter Kay as Spud Baker, a docker with a sideline in retail from whatever fell off the back of a ship.
Kay convinced as a burly bloke from Bermondsey, distributing f-words (hence the post-watershed slot) along with parental advice which took the form of “No daughter of mine is going out with a bloke who wears plimsolls” to Danny’s sister and “I was the same at your age” when Danny was caught with his girlfriend on his nana’s bed. Double standards, eh?
From Cradle To Grave is a pretty faithful re-creation of Baker’s book, penned by him and Jeff Pope, the man who wrote See No Evil, the TV drama about the Moors Murderers, and the Steve Coogan movie Philomena. Pope’s eye for period, plus ear for realistic dialogue, coupled with Baker’s peerless original material, have created a warm and involving comedy drama that is obviously made with love.
When begging for the loan of a coveted pair of strides, one lad begged another: “Oh, go on. Remember when I let you shoot me in the arse with that air pistol”. Kids, eh? Even the soundtrack is far from the tired old classics; the first episode opened with a bit of Atomic Rooster, there was Led Zeppelin’s Stairway To Heaven, Roxy Music’s Let’s Stick Together, and a theme tune by Squeeze. As I said, made with love.
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| Jamie Oliver's food campaigning continues apace in Sugar Rush (Channel 4) |
The duo are, of course, quite brilliant, but I forgot how uncomfortable they can make you feel. Recent material has included Enfield dressed as Nelson Mandela, selling drugs. He and Whitehouse appeared as a pair of heavily blacked-up Rastas in a Dragons’ Den sketch and, in the new show, Enfild was in blackface as “audience” guest Lenny Henry.
All done to satirise white political correctness, but it still felt crass. A shame, as Enfield and Whitehouse have produced some of the most memorable sketch comedy of the past 25 years, and continue to do so with new impersonations.
Mark Rylance in Wolf Hall was portrayed by Whitehouse wearing a Wolfi e Smith beret, with Enfield as Jimmy Carr and his hyena laugh, and also as a loathsome Ricky Gervais.
Oh, and Enfield as “audience” questioner, the late Brian Walden. Nice to see something that is not for the teenagers for once. Ironically, at the same time on BBC One Lenny Henry was starring in his self-penned Danny And The Human Zoo, about young black performer Danny’s disgust at having to play on the same bill as white performers in blackface.
Henry himself performed with The Black And White Minstrels as a young man, so clearly some wish fulfilment was going on as Danny (Kascion Franklin) exploded in anger on stage in Blackpool at the racist stereotypes he was supposed to portray, exploding his showbusiness career at the same time. Franklin is a name to watch: Henry had real gravitas, both playing Danny’s taciturn father, and as a new screenwriter.
JAMIE OLIVER’S food campaigning continues apace. Sugar Rush (Channel 4, Thursday) opened with Oliver watching young Mario have six teeth removed due to his love of sugary drinks.
Oliver was visibly shocked and pointed out how unnecessary this operation, with its large staff, was, and the £30million a year it is costing the NHS to extract children’s teeth. It is not just children who are suffering, as a dietician pointed out how much extra sugar is added to processed food, the equivalent of 20 teaspoons of sugar in a jar of Thai stir-fry sauce alone. No wonder 3.5 million of us have type 2 diabetes, costing the NHS £8.8billion a year.
I like Oliver when he is being serious and in mixing case studies of those made ill by sugar with a criticism of corporate culture, he created a powerful argument for a government tax on sugary foods. The boy’s done good.
Boy Meets Girl (BBC2, Monday) is a new sitcom about 26-year-old Harry falling in love with older woman Judy. So far, so sitcom, but that older woman is a transsexual, played by Rebecca Root, who is trans herself; a strikingly attractive woman in the Anjelica Houston mould. It was rather charming and certainly sympathetic while not particularly funny, but I suppose this is the problem when you are being mould-breaking. Maybe they should have used Enfi eld and Whitehouse as consultants.
David Stephenson is back soon
STEPHENSON'S ROCKET
NOBODY LIKES nostalgia more than me but to see Dad’s Army and The Perfect Morecambe And Wise on BBC Two for what seems like the past 20 years is ridiculous. The BBC has a huge archive of comedy, so why not show something else? How about the whole series of Reginald Perrin, as opposed to one measly episode, as a tribute to writer David Nobbs
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