Bridgerton Netflix
Skint BBC Four | iPlayer
Then Barbara Met Alan BBC Two | iPlayer
The Simpler Life Channel 4 | All 4
It’s obvious why some shameless types will be here for a Bridgerton second series review, so let’s get straight on to the sex quotient. In the opener, this series’ central character, Viscount Anthony Bridgerton (Jonathan Bailey), reveals his naked posterior. In ensuing episodes (all on Netflix), there is much feral flirting between him and Kate (Simone Ashley), sister of Edwina (Charithra Chandran), whom he is courting. Anthony also has a “wet shirt” moment, but it’s a bit sub-Darcy: not gratuitous/lingering enough, in my professional opinion. And Bridgerton wouldn’t be Bridgerton without Georgian cunnilingus; last time, performed by Simon (Regé-Jean Page) upon Daphne Bridgerton (Phoebe Dynevor) against a thankfully sturdy staircase. Here, such scenes are a long time, erm, coming. Which says it all about this serving of frothy, anachronistic, knowingly silly Bridgerton, based on Julia Quinn’s historical novel series; it arrives with a sumptuous jangle of crystal chandeliers, but then it never quite gets going.
It doesn’t matter that there is less sex in this series of Bridgerton, but I am bothered by the general air of aimlessness. A huge 2020 lockdown festive smash, the first series (created by Chris Van Dusen for the Shonda Rhimes stable) might have been absurd – an unashamed sugar rush of period drama trifle – but it had heart and sparkle. Now, with Simon absent, Daphne is reduced to wandering the manicured lawns like a decorous ghost, perhaps dreaming of staircases past, while Anthony hunts for a bride with a list of requirements: “Tolerable, dutiful, suitable hips for child-bearing…” – that make him come across like an 18th-century Gene Hunt.
It’s not a disaster, especially when compared with Sky Atlantic’s period offering The Gilded Age, which I am still watching in fascinated horror as it lifelessly plods to an anticlimax. Bridgerton still boasts deal-with-it colour-blind casting and witty orchestral pop takes (Pink, Alanis Morissette, Madonna). Eloise (Claudia Jessie) quotes Mary Wollstonecraft and appears to have caught a dose of feminism, possibly from the lower orders. Elsewhere, denizens of the “ton” are variously charmed, snubbed, courted, friend-zoned and swindled. Still – spoiler alert – maybe it was a mistake, TV-wise, for “insipid wallflower” Penelope Featherington (Nicola Coughlan) to be revealed so early on as scandal sheet scribe “Lady Whistledown” (voiced by Julie Andrews). There are eight books in Quinn’s series and already Bridgerton is dragging and puffing as if weighed down by petticoats dipped in wet cement.
There’s much to relish about BBC Four’s Skint, seven different perspectives on poverty, not least the sheer diversity of artists who’ve experienced it. Creatively overseen by actor-director Peter Mullan (My Name Is Joe) and writer Lisa McGee (Derry Girls), these 15-minute monologues feature contributions from both of them, alongside other writers, directors and actors.
Of the four shown on TV last week, the opener, McGee’s I’d Like to Speak to the Manager, performed by Derry Girls’ Saoirse-Monica Jackson, is a twisty fantasy of class resentment that unfolds like a Tale of the (brassic) Unexpected. Hannah, by author Kerry Hudson, depicts a young mother (Emma Fryer) musing candidly but hopefully on her difficult circumstances. In Gabriel Gbadamosi’s surrealist Regeneration, Gary Beadle plays a market-stall mushroom-seller, pondering gentrification and his childhood.
For me, the standout is Byron Vincent’s No Grasses, No Nonces, where Michael Socha (This Is England) gives a nerve-shredding performance as a lost soul whose youthful impoverishment made him vulnerable to abuse. Skint emerges as a kind of Talking Heads of the dispossessed: short, pithy soliloquies of lived experience. The depth and range convey an essential ugly truth: that poverty is not just one, but many wrecking balls, and the impact can be never-ending.
Even before the songs blare out (X-Ray Spex, the Fall), the BBC Two docudrama Then Barbara Met Alan, is imbued with riotous punk/post-punk spirit. Written by Jack Thorne and Genevieve Barr, directed by Bruce Goodison and Amit Sharma, it documents the fight for rights by disabled activist Barbara Lisicki (Ruth Madeley) and Alan Holdsworth (Arthur Hughes). Both fringe entertainers at the turn of the 1990s, they start a relationship, then, along with others, a “crip” revolution, disrupting the ITV charity telethon – “pre ‘show us your stumps’ voyeurism,” says Barbara, going on to fight for civil rights at the forefront of the Disabled People’s Direct Action Network (DAN).
Lisicki, Holdsworth and their allies shun condescension (one DAN slogan is “piss on pity”), demanding choice, respect and law changes. Madeley is a whip-smart, articulate Barbara, who has a child with the impassioned, chaotic Alan. While their relationship collapses, the activism continues: people throwing themselves out of wheelchairs and inserting themselves beneath buses. The hard-won achievement of the 1995 Disability Discrimination Act was to prove insufficient, but it was still a start.
What a wild, uncompromising ride. Barbara and Alan come across as clever, disruptive, dignified, funny, sexual, above all, real, breathing, alive. The real-life Barbara and Alan appear towards the end, reinforcing what a superb job Madeley and Hughes have done. This is a serious civil rights drama, delivered with bracing counterculture energy.
My well-developed evil side enjoyed the opening episodes of Channel 4’s six-part The Simpler Life. It showed 24 Britons taking on the spartan, community-spirited Amish lifestyle on a Devon farm, under the guidance of an Amish family from Ohio, for a social experiment run by the University of California, Berkeley.
The women have it worse, stuck with household chores and stupid long dresses, while the men get to wear trousers and build barns. Penny, a former footballer’s PA, is rebellious from the off – “Why would I spend two hours baking a cake?” – but the true comedy is in the bad-tempered community meetings where the sin of individualism is on full display.
This is Big Brother with harvests and an updated Imagine vibe: “Imagine there’s no Netflix”. It’s now been reported that the entire production is in jeopardy because participants are withdrawing, this withdrawing presumably being in the direction of electricity, mobile phones, social media and Deliveroo. Blur were right: modern life is rubbish. Until you try the alternative.
What else I’m watching…
Dynasties
(BBC One)
The return of the compelling nature series about animal families and their specific behaviours, narrated by the natural-world smoothie himself, David Attenborough. The opener focused on a mother puma tasked with protecting her cubs in the Patagonian mountains.
Storyville: The Distant Barking of Dogs
BBC Four
A timely showing of an Oscar-shortlisted 2017 feature-length documentary, about the conflict in the Donbas region of Ukraine. The film follows a 10-year-old boy over several years, as he grows up within the war.
Pachinko
Apple TV+
An intricate drama adapted from Min Jin Lee’s 2017 novel, which follows four generations of an immigrant Korean family in Japan. It spans several different time zones, regions and languages (Korean, English, Japanese) and demands your full attention.
