‘Inspiring, funny, genius, unique.” So says Maxine Peake of Victoria Wood in Our Friend Victoria (BBC1, 9.30pm), the first of a six-part tribute to the great comedian, actress, pianist, singer, director, screenwriter, and owner of the coolest pudding bowl haircut in history (actually, are there any others?). It’s hard to believe it’s only been a year since Vic – as everyone from Richard E Grant to Celia Imrie calls her – died at the age of 62. God, she was great. And God, things have fallen apart since we lost our friend from the north.
This is a lovefest in the time-honoured BBC tradition. Lots of fond, gentle and uncontroversial reminiscences trotted out by the usual suspects. “She turned ordinary situations into extraordinary comedy,” Julie Walters says. “Vic’s beautiful face with that funny tooth on one side that’s so cute,” sighs Joanna Scanlan. Lots of classic clips from the BBC archive that we have seen so many times we can recreate them in our own heads, complete with fuzzy screens, canned laughter and shaky Acorn Antiques-style backdrops. Basically, I didn’t learn a thing but I chuckled and smiled and felt all warm and British and BBC-clad in that uniquely Victoria Wood (and, OK, Alan Bennett) way.
Walters presents this first episode sort of in character – though I now find it hard to disentangle her from her Wood creations – and focuses on “Vic’s take on age: deaf old grannies, middle-aged women mid-crisis, and teenagers.” The archive footage is all well and good, but I could have done without seeing “Kimberley” again in lieu of more on why, for example, Wood tended to give Walters her best lines and had a habit of casting her as an old lady (her mother at the bingo, Petula Gordino in Dinnerladies, Mrs Overall in Acorn Antiques) when they were pretty much the same age. Still, programmes like this have a Proustian effect. To watch one is to feel as though it’s Christmas, circa 1990, and you’re all stuffed and sentimental on the sofa laughing at the Two Soups sketch again. Which, Walters reminds us, was actually called Waitress. And is still funny. (Go on, watch it in your head now. Genius!)
Wood’s motivations are not discussed here, nor indeed is her biography, so we don’t even get the story of how she and Walters met while she was writing for a London Bush theatre revue in the 70s. It’s a shame, but perhaps also part of Wood’s persona. Like Judi Dench, she was a notoriously private person. Even when she was alive, we only really saw her via the people who knew and worked with her.
And, of course, by her remarkable body of work. So Walters introduces us to her favourite sketch: Chrissie the long-distance swimmer, in which a delusional 12-year-old with a “learn to swim with the Daily Mirror” chart on her bedroom wall is interviewed about her plan to cross the Channel. “If I do get to the French coast I don’t talk French very well,” she confesses. It’s so silly and sweet. That was the thing about Wood: she could do teens bragging at bus-stops and menopausal confessions, love songs and HRT patches falling in the minestrone. She would have nailed the vagaries, humiliations and mischiefs of old age if only she had got there. Then again, she was so bloody brilliant she did all that years ago with Walters.
Peter Kay’s Car Share (BBC1, 9pm) is a direct descendant of Wood’s brand of northern soulful comedy: deceptively simple, heartwarming, and delighting in the inherently naff. The first series garnered loads of praise and became one of the most watched shows on BBC iPlayer thanks to its basic but lovely premise: two colleagues who fancy each other a bit commute to work in a car. Now back for a second series, though with only four episodes, it’s more of the same, though Kayleigh has moved in with her sister and, for the first half of the episode, commutes to work by public transport. In such a small upholstered world this counts as a major plot shift.
They share about a million phone calls as John (Kay) listens to the Now That’s What I Call Music! (48) CD Kayleigh has given him, singing lustily along to Hear’Say’s Pure and Simple and picking his nose and looking at it. There’s a road rage encounter with an elderly cyclist that by the end of the working day has gone viral on YouTube, and a singalong to Bardo’s One Step Further playing on Forever FM (which is still “playing timeless hits now and forever”). Mostly, though, this is comedy so gentle I didn’t actually laugh. Maybe I should just close my eyes and play the Waitress sketch again.
• This article was amended on 12 April 2017 to correct “Daily Mail” to “Daily Mirror”.
