The Ice Cream Girls, a three-part thriller, began last week with an episode mostly told in flashback and it was during one of these flashbacks that I myself had a flashback to all the times I have seen this kind of thing done in flashbacks, which is often.
The opener was OK as far as it went, and the presence of Jodhi May always raises standards by 15 per cent (some experts say it may even be as high as 21 per cent) but it just didn’t go anywhere original. Or interesting.
Jodhi May, left, and Lorraine Burroughs in The Ice Cream Girls. There were one or two affecting moments, but it was otherwise just so relentlessly familiarBased on the bestseller by Dorothy Koomson, this is the story of two women, Serena (Lorraine Burroughs) and Poppy (May), who return to their home town of Brighton having gone their separate ways 17 years earlier.
Briefly friends as teenagers, they fell out, as you would, after a teacher who was romancing them both became the victim of what the Radio Times always calls ‘a brutal murder’ as opposed, I suppose, to a more pleasant murder of the non-brutal kind. (If I could choose my own more pleasant murder of the non-brutal kind, I would like to be suffocated by puppies.)
Anyway, Serena has been forced to return to care for her dying mother while Poppy, who was convicted of the crime, even though she has always protested her innocence, has just been released from prison.
What really happened that night?
There were one or two affecting moments, but it was otherwise just so relentlessly familiar.
All those flashbacks, and you can always tell when someone is about to have a flashback, because they just stop where they are, and drift off, as if having a flashback is the equivalent of slipping into a coma.
If I had my way, Danny Baker would present every single programme on TV
Poppy and Serena tended to have their flashbacks at windows, so they could gaze pensively into the middle distance, or on the beach, so they could gaze pensively out to sea, hair blowing out behind.
And even May’s contribution could not save it from all this gazing.
Actually, I’m rather fond of dramatic clichés and although this has yet to offer a chase through a market, during which a fruit stall is upturned, apples roll everywhere and the stallholder stands in the middle of the road shaking his fist, there are two more episodes to go so I am optimistic.
As to who did it – or who didn’t do it; that’s my suspicion – I’m not bothered. I am, in fact, far more worried about Serena’s mother.
She appeared in a couple of early scenes, went upstairs and was never seen again. Narrative Redundancy Syndrome? Or did she simply pass away, non-brutally, while up there? Puppies, I hope.
People are always nostalgic for the single TV play, even though they can only ever remember Cathy Come Home and even though there have been so many terrific series.
Still, I wish Sky Arts luck with Playhouse Presents…, their season of six half-hour plays, but the curtain-raiser?
Disappointing. Hey Diddly Dee, written by Marc Warren, and set in a West End theatre, focused on Roger Kite (Peter Serafinowicz), a monstrously egotistical actor who is about to open in a dreadful musical about Andy Warhol.
Obviously, one doesn’t expect people on television to behave as real people, or you might as well just put a real person in the corner of your living room and watch that, but there must be a thread of believability, and that thread was nowhere.
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Would a theatre company, the day before they were due to open in the West End, be so shambolic and useless?
The cast included Kylie Minogue in a tiny role, Mathew Horne as the humiliated understudy plotting Roger’s comeuppance and David Harewood adopting a needless Birmingham accent, as if a real one isn’t bad enough.
And the plot? It had something to do with a black cat and the curse of Macbeth but then Roger came unstuck in the shower in an unspecified manner. Go figure.
But on a brighter note – much brighter; 678 per cent brighter, say the experts whom I’ve neatly invented to back up everything I say – there was Danny Baker presenting the archival clip show Brushing Up On… And the subject?
Tunnels. I have no interest in tunnels, obviously, but this was great. This was seriously entertaining.
If I had my way, Baker would present every single programme on TV, come round my house and let me sit on his knee. He’s so clever at being silly, and it all pours out of him naturally.
The clips – of the attempts to build a Channel tunnel, of a German who farms trout in a tunnel, of John Craven ‘legging’ a boat through a tunnel – were nothing in and of themselves, but add Baker and it’s clever and silly and funny, funny, funny.
I think this proves – and I include all the programmes reviewed this week – that TV is never about what it’s about, but how you go about what it’s about. And that’s your lesson for today.
Next week, we’ll be making our own flashbacks so please have the following to hand: sticky tape, an empty washing-up liquid bottle and huge chunks of your past life you can recall verbatim, even if you can’t remember where you last put your car keys.
