There’s a particular kind of practical joke that needs to be done right. It’s about disappointing someone, and then more than making up for the disappointment. My own girlfriend is a big fan of the genre, as it happens. Every year, on my birthday, she tells me where to meet her, which invariably turns out to be a spit-and-sawdust pub. We get our drinks, and ask to see a bar menu if there is one, or debate whether to go peanuts or pork scratchings or both if there isn’t. And then she takes me round the corner to the lovely restaurant, which probably featured in Weekend magazine recently, and which I pretend I hadn’t noticed on the way from the underground.
Even if it’s becoming less of a surprise as the years go on, my girlfriend’s still a lot better at it than Nicki’s fiance Stephen in Don’t Tell the Bride (BBC1). I know DTTB featured here last week, but every episode is different, this one is a good one, and I think it’s what (some) people will be watching and talking about. Plus it is part of an ongoing national debate: don’t worry about BBC3 closing down says the BBC, we’re turning BBC1 in to BBC3! Problem solved. Well, unless you’re some old duffer who thinks that BBC1 should be about quality, serious television …
So Steve’s hilarious idea is to send over a really horrid wedding dress – not even a wedding dress, just a horrid dress – to his Nicki on the day before the big one. “It’s horrible, I’m not wearing that,” Nicki says, trying to hold back the tears and hoping hard it’s a joke. It is, ha ha ha ha! Steve sends over the real one, which Nicki … hates just as much, if not more, because she knows it definitely is the real one this time. What doesn’t she like about it? “Everything,” she splutters, not succeeding in not crying this time. “I can’t believe he’s done this.”
It’s the equivalent of my girlfriend saying we’re not really having your birthday dinner in this grotty pub, we’re having it in … Maccy D’s! Actually, I wouldn’t mind that, to be honest; or the pub, I’m not hard to please. But Nicki really does care about the dress. It – the whole wedding, actually – is inspired by Steve’s favourite Guns N’ Roses video (November Rain), and harks back to Steve’s days as a long-haired rocker, when they first started stepping out, 20 years ago. Trouble is, in the meantime Nicki has grown up (they have jobs, kids, a mortgage, etc) while Steve hasn’t. Or he’s having a midlife crisis.
Oh, and then it emerges that Nicki was never a rock chick anyway, even back in the day, she only pretended to be. She really liked Kylie. As for weddings: well, her idea for a perfect one is a country mansion, fairytale, fairy lights, all that (zzzz, I know, but some girls like that). Oops, so not only is Steve’s rock-themed wedding about as wrong as it could be, but their entire relationship is built on a lie.
Not such a bad lie, though. She pretended to like Guns N’ Roses because she liked Steve and she wanted him to like her. It worked. And that – the fact that despite Steve misjudged dress prank, and misjudged dress, and misjudged whole frigging wedding, they clearly love each other very much, after 20 years, and should very much be together, for ever – makes the whole thing bearable. Ahhh, it is actually very sweet.
I think the wedding – in a church, with a choir, and a tribute band – is brilliant, and I don’t even like Guns N’ Roses (I’m more Kylie, too). Imagine if it had been inspired by Billy Idol’s White Wedding video, with Steve smashing through the stained-glass window on a motorbike … Anyway, it doesn’t matter what I think of it. Nicki’s there, which is a result, in the (second) dress, which she’s been talked into. And, even if the whole thing isn’t exactly what she would have wanted, she does seem to be enjoying the occasion. Hey, maybe even more important than the venue, and the music, and the style of cake and dress, is the person you’re marrying?
Don’t Tell the Bride isn’t very serious television. The event it documents has been created for, and paid for by, television. But the people, and the feelings they have for each other, are real. It is genuinely touching, as well as being funny, as men cocking up never fails to be. Perfect, for BBC3.
