Television - Andrew Billen on a worthy but dull saga about matriarchs that does nothing for feminism

One should always let one's conscience be one's guide but, just ask Pinocchio, Jiminy Cricket can lead you into the jaws of the whale as surely as anyone else. I was, I confess, about to review two silly new comedies this week when my conscience persuaded me that readers of this of all publications would prefer me to discuss a major BBC drama about women and socialism stretched over 80 years of Glaswegian oppression.

I imagine a similar fit of conscience must have befallen BBC2's Jane Root when she gave the green light to Donna Franceschild's The Key (9pm, Tuesdays). It was doubtless a well-meaning mistake, but a rather big one. The Key does no more favours to BBC2's pinko heritage than it does to feminism or socialism.

The serial's plan is to show how we got from wicked mill owners to wicked call-centre managers in three generations and how three generations of plucky working-class women resisted the bastards. Lest we forget this simple schema, Franceschild contrives to keep Mary, her Generation One heroine, alive up to her 99th birthday in 1997, her death conveniently coinciding with new Labour's elevation to office.

The great struggle's symbolic death is obvious. What no one told Franceschild, however, was that symbols generally excuse the writer from having to spell things out. Franceschild spells everything out, all the time. My favourite snatch of dialogue from the first episode came from the union stalwart Joe, husband of Mary's daughter Helen, a downtrodden cleaner. He has got wind that one of his daughters has been intimidated by a school bully called McAllister: "Don't talk to me about the McAllisters," he blusters. "Ian McAllister was one of the three biggest union busters in Glasgow - 93 days on strike for the right not to have your arm cut off by a meat refrigerator fan, and he locked them out! If there ever was a family with an inbuilt hatred of the working classes it's the McAllisters."

All this is delivered from a recumbent position. We soon learn why. "Even without my legs, I can take on that bourgeois bastard." Joe, you see, lost his legs in a dockyard accident and has lived in pain and penury ever since.

Not all the dialogue is as bad as this, but I have to say that some of it is worse, such as when a nasty husband tells the women of his house: "I'm away to the Puffin. I need the smell of men in my nostrils"; or when Maggie, the new Labour candidate, screeches: "I'm losing my soul." But my favourite comes when old Mary, aged 86 in 1984, utters the immortal line: "I want you to take me to Orgreave, Jessie."

The not untalented cast (although John Sessions as the creepy call-centre boss out-acts all the women) is not helped by David Blair's clunking direction, which places all the First World War flashbacks in black and white, and paints the 1930s scenes in sepia. Full colour is cleverly reserved for events following the introduction of colour TV.

To make sure we notice the march of history, the television is left on in the corner of rooms and broadcasts only the news. At one point originality seems to beckon when, in September 1939, a character actually turns a radio off - but, alas, another character soon after that gets hers switched on just in time for Neville C's aria "I have to tell you now that no such assurance . . ." Fortunately, the great dates in politics coincide with this family's history. Jessie's ill-fated wedding is scheduled for the day Margaret Thatcher comes to power. Her sister Maggie's occurs in 1984, ensuring a nasty bust-up at the reception between the bride's Scargill-worshipping family and the groom's toff Tory parents.

The men in this matriarchal saga are either drunken, violent bastards (Mary's husband turns into Rab C Nesbitt over-night) or losers redeemed by a fondness for poetry. The women are much more sympathetically drawn. Even Maggie, the new Labourite whose politics betray the legacy passed down to her by mother and grandmother, is, in Ronni Ancona's portrayal, rather likeable, although it is Jessie (Frances Grey), her downtrodden and bookish sister, who proves in the end to be her granny's heir.

In a perverse attempt to keep us interested, there is a sub-plot about (I promise you) the private finance initiative, and a tease over why Mary wears a key round her neck. I won't reveal why, in case you decide to follow this thing to its end, but I can't resist mentioning that aged Mary finally dies drowning in privatised bathwater, just missing a spin-doctor's photo shoot.

"The canvas is just too big. I'm taking on too much. The characters are cardboard. The plot's contrived. The dialogue's wooden." So says Jessie to a putative publisher about her novel. But the publisher, a Jane Root figure, tells her that, au contraire, the book's wonderful. Jessie wisely abandons it anyway. I wish only that Franceschild, whose record on TV, from Takin' Over the Asylum to Donovan Quick, is not bad, had shown similar strength of mind. I have a horrible feeling, however, that Mr Cricket was on her shoulder telling her she owed it to her granny's memory to struggle on.

Andrew Billen is a staff writer on the Times

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