I was watching television with my kinda (I’m not actually married) mother-in-law the other evening. Russell T Davies’s Cucumber, as it happens. “I’m guessing it’s not actually about cucumbers,” she says. Not really, no.
Oh, and her hearing’s not great, so we had the subtitles on. Which somehow makes it more in-your-face, with it all written up there on the 42-inch HD screen. “Don’t go in my room and wank over my pants, OK?” And: “Uncle Lance says you never take it up the bum … He said you’ve been boyfriends all these years. But you’ve never been bummed, is that right?”
Kinda mum-in-law’s no prude, she’s open-minded and everything. But I did slightly wish it was a few days later and we were watching the beginning of the new series of Ruth Jones’s Stella (Sky1) instead. No bumming in Stella. A little kiss and a cuddle between Stella (Jones) and her fella (Patrick Baladi), a hint that he quite likes her in her nurse’s outfit, that’s about as saucy as it gets.
Stella is nice, and old-fashioned. The comedy comes from misunderstandings, and things going a bit wrong. Too many people, and generations, and too much noise in the house that Stella’s fella – Michael Jackson – is trying to use as his solicitor’s office. At the hospital, Stella takes blood from the wrong patient – not a patient at all in fact but a visiting rellie. At the new Cafe de les Alans, little Alan’s food is ruined because big Alan bought bath salts instead of actual salt.
But everything turns out fine in the end. Little Alan’s cobbled-together food is brilliant. And Michael knocks through to the house next door, solving the problem of it not selling – and the dry rot, and the overcrowding – with a few blows of a sledgehammer. There is an optimism, the feeling that everything will be fine. People might be a bit daft, but they’re lovely underneath, and a warm blanket of community lies over everything, keeping it all cosy.
It’s not challenging, or bold, I’m not laughing very much, to be honest; chuckling gently, at times. In most ways – the interesting television way for one – it’s got nothing on Cucumber. But in one way Stella easily wins; it’s excellent television to watch with a kinda mother-in-law. Mine didn’t make it to the end of Cucumber.
