They were always going to start on a bum note. We may not know much about Chaucer these days, but we know he wrote a story about someone kissing someone's butt by accident and getting back a raspberry rather than a kiss. This scene has held a strong appeal over the years for bored fifth-formers. It inevitably appealed to the BBC, too. One likes to think of the moment in the BBC1 conference when the ratings-hungry boys and girls realised they had to sell to viewers six episodes of one-off dramas based on The Canterbury Tales (9pm, Thursdays, BBC1). "For God's sake," someone must have said, "start with the one with the bottom jokes."
The one with the bottom jokes is The Miller's Tale, and since, in the J-Lo era, bot- toms are all the rage, BBC1 couldn't really go wrong. What is more, the lead bum belonged to Billie Piper, the ridiculously cute woman-child who, in order to atone for some unimaginable sins in a previous life, is Chris Evans's wife. I shall not dwell, but I guarantee her sex scene on Thursday night will have been posted on the internet by the time you read this. In a neat piece of TV self-reference, the second naked bum belonged to James Nesbitt, who, as Adam in Cold Feet, wooed Rachel with a rose stuck between his nether cheeks. This time he ended up with a soldering iron up there.
The original Nicholas's bottom was, you may recall, assaulted with a hot coulter, and Peter Bowker's script suggests he had kept his Coghill open while he was writing. He would have been better off making his translation a little freer. Here John, the rich old carpenter, became Dennis Waterman's John, owner of a karaoke pub in an English village. His wife, Alisoun, turned into Alison, a lustrous karaoke diva, and Nicholas, the clerk who boards with him, was Nesbitt's Nick, a conman pretending to be a record company agent. Alisoun's courtly lover, giver of the misdirected kiss, was the parish clerk, Absolon. Here he became Danny Absolon, the hairdresser (well, he has the name for it).
Nick inventively rips off the entire village, beds Alison and humiliates everyone. He is the devil come to town and Bowker gives him the best lines, many of them coming off the back of karaoke's biggest hits. ("Whatever happened to Marvin Gaye?" asks Alison as he seduces her. "That's not important now," he replies.)
The performers all gave it everything they had: Nesbitt, his mouth in perpetual motion; Waterman in constant and, literally, impotent rage; Piper, a revelation as an actress, embodying innocent vulgarity and sweet guile all at once.
It was all cartoonish stuff, and would never have got past a script conference had Chauc- er's imprimatur not been branded on its back page, and never to the screen without that cast. The only really interesting updating was to substitute the original Nicholas's threat of a second Noah's flood with Nick's fantasy of fame and fortune in the pop world. The promise of celebrity proved just as capable of bringing on insanity.
The second episode is also set in the world of show business, in this case around the set of a glossy soap opera starring Beth Craddock. Played by (who else?) Julie Walters, Beth is our Bath, a bawd married countless times, a good-time girl who likes to be in control.
Sally Wainwright's clever screenplay offers double value by giving us not only the wife but the fairy tale she tells, too. In fact, we get two tales from her. The first is her favourite dirty story, used to attune her conquests' sexual antennae, a joke about a vicar's daughter and two rutting dogs. The second is the storyline of the soap she stars in. Its plot echoes the original Wife of Bath's Tale by having a young man rape a maiden and then get off the hook by marrying an old(er) wife. As in Chaucer's scheme, the story within the story reflects the life of its teller. Beth soon seduces her screen lover for real. Ageism, fisticuffs and a struggle for power ensue.
What's really smart about this script, however, is that you don't need to get a single reference to the Chaucer to enjoy it. Instead, twists and witty dialogue make you forget all about him. In contrast to The Miller's Tale, it subverts expectations about sex, youth and age, not least because of Walters, who, when she is not looking wrecked, looks amazing.
"Sex, drugs and rock'n'roll", proclaim the posters for this series in Caxtonian script; and I am not sure if Franc Roddam, the producer who had the original idea, thinks he is educating us with Chaucerian conceit, using it as an excuse to get filth on to the air, or telling us something about the unvarying nature of the English character.
What he has certainly achieved is the comeback of the single play - and some of the best writers and actors in the country clearly couldn't wait to get on board. Despite the unevenness of the first two, the excitement over them was justified.
Set somewhere between London and Canterbury, some time between Chau- cer's age and Neversville, these new Canterbury Tales are paradoxically fresh - fables to be repeated as special treats for years to come.
Andrew Billen is a staff writer on the Times
