Kate is in bed when she is woken by a hooded youth trying to get through her front door. She calls the police. How does she know he is an intruder, they ask. Never mind, she says, she will take the law into her own hands, with her husband’s gun (she is lying; there is no gun, she just wants them to get there quickly). There is a cricket bat, though, with which she whacks the hand that comes through the letterbox. Oops, it’s not an intruder, but her stepson. Then the police turn up. Plus the intruder’s dad, Kate’s partner, Rob, who is also a copper, as it happens. Everyone goes inside, for explanations, apologies and a bowl of icy water for the sore hand.
The opening of Kay Mellor’s Love, Lies & Records (BBC1) doesn’t have a lot to do with the plot – or plots, there are a few – but it serves to introduce our hero (played by Ashley Jensen), and the home life she has to juggle with her professional one. There are other offspring – a couple of grumpy teenagers, who appear, grumpily, in the morning – whom Kate has to humour and get to school, and worry about as a mother. Daughter has been getting worrying texts, some amateur detective work will be required.
Kate doesn’t always play by the rules (see gun stunt above), but she gets things done. She is also warm and kind and everyone loves her. Well, apart from Judy (a splendidly wicked Rebecca Front) at work, who really doesn’t love her. Then there is Rick, also at work, who loves Kate a bit too much, especially after a few at the Christmas party, in the storeroom, know what I’m saying? Work is where most of the action is going on (and not just in the storeroom).
Kate is a registrar at Leeds city hall. Births, deaths, marriages, all that. No, I know, you might not think that would be the most exciting setting for a work-based drama but this is proper Mellordrama, and she squeezes every last drop of life, humanity and excitement out of the place.
So first in today is a lovely man to register his lovely baby. No mother? No, she is in a hospice dying of cancer; she decided against treatment to save the baby. They never married, didn’t have the money or the time. Hey, Kate does marriages – you know where this is going … she could pop in later, before it’s too late. With this strand, Mellor has got hold of your tearducts and is squeezing them, milking them. I’m blubbing, along with everyone else, like a baby, at the ceremony. Which was just in time, of course.
Then there is a sham-marriage scam going on, which will also require some amateur sleuthing. And some office politics. Kate is promoted to superintendent registrar, which everyone is delighted about, except for bitter Judy, who thinks she should have got it. Guess what Judy does have, though? Only the CCTV footage of Kate and Rick wishing each other a very happy Christmas …
That flame hasn’t been quite extinguished: there are still feelings there, which probably is one reason Kate decides it is time to pop the question to Rob back at home. Rob is a professional sleuth, remember, currently investigating the murder of a young woman. And although I don’t know, I bet anything that ends up having a connection with Kate’s concerns. The dodgy marriage scam possibly, or daughter’s dodgy texts perhaps …
Oh, one more thing back at the town hall. One of Kate’s colleagues, James, announces that, as of next week, he will be coming to work as a woman. And everyone is delighted – yay! Apart from Judy. of course – boo, hiss. Flipping heck, that’s a lot of goings-on crammed into an hour of TV. And you thought there might not be enough going on at the register office. Not only did I cry, I laughed (at the couple who want to call their daughter Chlamydia), I sighed, because I knew that Mellor had tied a string to pretty much every single one of my emotions and was pulling them as if I were a marionette. And because often it was bonkers. But I couldn’t help enjoying the experience, because it was warm and human and because, like everyone surely did, I loved Jensen’s Kate.
And in the portrayal of Leeds (another star of the show), you may have recognised something of the country – some of the issues around immigration, mid-Brexit Britain and the problems faced by working mothers … No, maybe we shouldn’t get carried away. L,L&R is mainly about getting away from reality for an hour and having fun, without thinking too much about it. That, it does very well.
