A young woman wakes up somewhere nice and sunny, on a hot holiday with her fella. She goes down to the swimming pool, dangles her feet in the water. Then she is floating on the lilo, in a bikini – pool-ready body – headphones on, listening to Down with the Trumpets by Rizzle Kicks. Not just listening; singing – shouting – along, exuberantly. “We don’t wanna be lousy, or shameless, but we’re running round like we’re brainless …”
Chances are you won’t have come to The C-Word (BBC1, Sunday) not knowing what it’s about, not knowing that it’s based on Lisa Lynch’s book that resulted from her blog that resulted from her finding out she had cancer. So you probably think – as I did – that this holiday scene comes from pre-C happy days. After all, it’s right at the beginning of the film. And next she’s at her magazine job, then down the pub with her mates, talking about the the US road trip she’s going to make with her lovely husband, who is also there. Then she gets her diagnosis: breast cancer, or “The Bullshit” as she calls it, because that’s what it is, and that’s how LL tells it – like it is. Honestly. Bullshit free, ironically.
There’s a bit of a twist near the end though. Everything’s been done – boob off, chemo, hair out, wig on. But The Bullshit has kept on coming, and spreading, to her bones and her brain. Now they’re talking about coping techniques, strategies, frigging “mindfulness”, hospices … this is only going to end one way: death. Let’s not beat about the bush – she doesn’t.
But then, because she’s responding well to treatment, the doctor gives her a break from it and she goes on holiday. Not that road trip in the US, who won’t have her – yeah, thanks America [sticks middle finger up at entire country]. Sunny Spain then, to a villa, with a pool and a lilo … back to where we started.
We hadn’t seen everything in the original scene – her walking stick, the rest of her family there as well as her lovely husband, the exhaustion and the pain. It wasn’t pre-Bullshit at all, but very much deep Bullshit. A trick of sorts, as well as a twist, but a good one that shows the Bullshit doesn’t have to mean only Bullshit, that there’s still room for joy, too. Not in a nonsense, turn-a-negative-into-a-positive way; in a Rizzle Kicks way. Good choice, incidentally, and thank heaven it’s not some soppy, lame-arse, cancer-dying music. Still, it’s going to be very hard to hear Down with the Trumpets now without welling up a bit (yeah, thanks Lisa).
I did plenty of that, welling up. Also laughing. The C-Word is very sad and very funny and very honest and – most of all – very human. Ace from Sheridan Smith, demonstrating – yet again – that right now there isn’t really anyone to touch her for turning words in a script into breathing, warm-blooded human life. For nailing it, basically.
But she actually doesn’t steal the show this time, for once. Well, it has a lot to do with SS’s performance, I guess, plus the film and its makers, so shout-outs all over the shop. But still, the real star of The C-Word is its subject. Take a bow and rest in peace, Lisa Lynch.
After which, Home Fires (ITV, Sunday) – squabbling and blackberry jam-making at the Cheshire village of Great Paxton’s branch of the WI – all seemed a bit petty and parochial, I’m afraid. Even with a war – the second world one – breaking out. I’ll try again next week. Maybe …
I did, however, enjoy An Immigrant’s Guide To Britain (Channel 4, Sunday). German expat and funnyman (I know: Pop! There goes another national stereotype) Henning Wehn and some other recent arrivals try to get their heads around what goes on in our collective head, and in our country, which they’ve chosen to make their home.
I especially like Mark(!) from India’s deliberately half-hearted attempts to learn some banter (BANTER!) from a likely pair of market stall traders in north London. And Veronika from Hungary’s effort to win round the Daily Mail by offering free hot goulash to staff outside its offices. How does the Mail react to this hand – ladle – of friendship? By calling the police, of course. Welcome to Britain, everyone.
