The warnings couldn’t have been clearer. About to go on maternity leave? Do not watch The Replacement. Step away from the set during the BBC’s swish new thriller about a Glasgow architect whose replacement might (or might not – maybe it’s just the hormones) be out to snaffle her position, her friends, her hubbie, her sanity and her unborn daughter.
But, reader, I braved it. I’m off to have a baby at the end of the week, yet I poured myself a stiff orange juice and tuned in. Did I cope? I did. Did I go into early labour? I did not. The biggest scare was the script: maybe I’ve been spoiled by this year’s Oscars crop, or just dimly believed everyone who says TV is now terrific, but I hadn’t realised we were still churning out such trash. For The Replacement – the first episode, at least, which deals with the pre-birth bit – is a tone-deaf soap: absolutely batty and, in my experience anyway, total bobbins.
Perhaps it has to be melodrama? Maybe no one would bother watching if the stand-in was just nicer and more competent, rather than a psycho with terrific lippy. But surely the first scenario is the more frightening, because it must be so common. My replacement, for instance, isn’t just great: he’s also easier-going than me. And if he were secretly after my boyfriend, I doubt he’d act on it. He poses a problem because he’s so nice. That’s not a danger the police would necessarily be eager to pursue, but a definite threat nonetheless.
The received wisdom is that taking time off to look after a child marks the start of a stress headache that persists for the rest of most women’s lives. Before then, it’s all greasy poles and eager ambition. Afterwards, a guilty juggle and diminished coffers.
Anxiety over the cuckoo syndrome, already especially keen among my gender, is exacerbated. Those younger models aren’t just nipping at our heels, they’re getting paid to stick their feet under our desks.
This was the world The Replacement sought to reflect. But the longer the programme went on, the less it felt like an accurate version of the one in which we actually live. Even before the appearance of the woman out to oust her, our heroine doesn’t want to take more than a couple of months off. This despite the watertight job security she enjoys at her highly sympathetic firm, in one of the best countries in the world for statutory maternity provision. In the US, remember, it’s still legal to be given absolutely no leave, and 12 weeks is the benchmark. Everyone makes their own call, but it seems a shame, if you can afford it, not to take advantage of the privileges we enjoy in Britain.
Perhaps as a provocation over persistent workplace sexism, the programme also has our mother-to-be react with curious resistance to the ways in which the behaviour of others subtly changes towards you once you are expecting.
In her case, this means reassurances of continued value by her husband and boss (“We love you, we love you!” “You wouldn’t say that if I was a man”), advice proffered by other parents, and general special treatment.
Again, each to their own. But I can’t imagine I’m alone in just happily lapping all this up. Can it feel intrusive? Surely it’s reassuring that wider society feels it has a stake in the future. And if there’s one thing that impending parenthood does seem to prepare you for, it’s the prospect of replacement. Just as you’re feeling increasingly clapped out, you get a second shot at offering the world some value – one that isn’t completely your responsibility. This feels nothing but right and good.
But it shouldn’t simply pertain to replication by our own flesh and blood: it means we ought to embrace replacement wholesale. Are we really so convinced of our own specialness that we reject the idea that someone else might be better; a bit more interesting, even more employable? Is our arrogance now so imperious that we fail to reconcile ourselves to superannuation and mortality? Surely the fact that the graveyards are full of indispensable men is a consolation as well as a sadness.
The fact that none of us ultimately matters should spur us on to face up to the need to work collectively to effect change – to devote ourselves to something a little larger than our own individual narratives.
Even Wikipedia can help point the way. Hunt about a bit and you come across some remarkable pages, apparently aimed at would-be contributors but readily applicable to us all. These are called: “You are not irreplaceable”; “Wikipedia does not need you”. And one that I, as an editor, found especially salutary: “No editor is indispensable”.
My maternity cover might well do a better job than me. Worse things happen. And my experience has been that the scariest thing about pregnancy – including the body horror complications, including shopping for buggies in John Lewis on a Saturday afternoon – is the thought of not being pregnant if you want to be. If you think a land-grabbing colleague is a formidable adversary, try the prospect of infertility. Then try adding the knowledge it might have been avoided had you simply cracked on with your own replacement more quickly.
Some terrors aren’t terribly televisual. But their dramatisation would be a truly brave move.
