Television
When too much is never enough
Published 31 July 2006
A punchy drama of shopaholism proves as addictive as any reality-TV series
Shiny Shiny Bright New Hole in My Heart BBC2
Christmas, it was posited in this one-off drama, is the time of year when we show our love with gifts. But what if you think it is Christmas every day, and buying and giving is the only way you communicate? What if you mix up self-possession with your possessions? That way lies madness, Queer Street and, potentially, a smug TV drama in which viewers are asked to "understand" that those who cannot cope with the bounty of an affluent society are sick.
Wisely, Shiny Shiny Bright New Hole in My Heart (26 July, 9pm) - even the title given to Nathalie the shopaholic's story was excessive - was cautious about pathologising her condition. In the first place, shrinkery is the antithesis of drama. In the second, over-shopping may not be an illness at all. In America, doctors have had only limited success treating shopaholics with drugs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors). As an unsympathetic GP puts it to a colleague, who happens to be Nathalie's husband: "Is it a real condition at all or is it a cry for help - in which case she's wasting your time and now mine? She should be sent back to Selfridges with a gold card."
So what is wrong with Nathalie, a personal shopper to the rich who becomes so badly infected by the spending bug that she hires a lock-up in which to house unopened electronic goods, buys a £24,000-watch (a two-credit-card transaction), splashes out on a sports car although she cannot drive, and treats her daughter to a pet pony? The pony at the window - the daughter would have been happy with a pink plastic one - is, to her husband, the equivalent of the wake-up call delivered by the horse's head on the pillow in The Godfather. "It's a huge animal in our garden," he protests, to which Nathalie responds: "It's not a thoroughbred," the script allowing itself a moment of humour.
A clue to her problem lies in the almost spectral thinness of Nathalie, played by Sally Hawkins. Manchester's greatest consumer never actually gains weight, a visual metaphor for how, the more this ex-bulimic consumes, the emptier she becomes. She lacks any aptitude for developing relationships. At home, she communicates with her daughter by gifts of designer clothes. At work she misidentifies Maya, the wealthy female client for whom she selects clothes and jewellery, as her friend, prompting Maya to remind her when she cries for help: "I pay you to support me, not the other way round." Like every other relationship in Nathalie's life, friendship has become a commercial transaction and, as such, is on its way to bankruptcy.
The only person impervious to materialism and thus Nathalie's attempts to buy love is her husband, Jeremy, a first-rate doctor but a second-rate human being. The genius of the piece is that Jeremy is almost as dysfunctional as his wife. If we were to offer a diagnosis of his condition, the terms "Asperger syndrome" or "sociopath" might come into play. He is so bad at small talk that it almost costs him a partnership in his GP practice; so bad at it, in fact, that he goes to an office party armed with riddles from his daughter's joke book. At home, if Nathalie is incapable of telling the truth even to herself (credit is, after all, a kind of financial lie), Jeremy can only tell the truth and, unwittingly, further depletes his wife's skimpy self-confidence by wondering if her new dress needs more "lifting or gathering". As Jeremy, Steven Mackintosh delivers a performance of literal-minded awkwardness that eclipses even Hawkins's excellent turn.
However, the reason why this drama was so much better than any other on television this past week was that the writer-director, Marc Munden, placed a premium on naturalism. The dialogue was partly improvised, the shopping scenes were filmed in real malls by long-distance lens, and at the Spenders Anonymous meeting actors mixed it up with real addicts who delivered strange soliloquies about their past sprees. Shiny Shiny . . . made a drama such as Tony Marchant's recent Family Man, which dealt with another hot social topic (IVF clinics), look like soap opera. With the most addictive TV continuing to come from within the reality genre - The Apprentice and The Convent more than Big Brother - drama has to continue to reply with that most artificial of all forms: realism. This is not a new insight: in another era, Munden's play could have proudly marched in step with the best of Ken Loach, not because it dealt with an "issue", but because it felt true.
Andrew Billen is a staff writer for the Times
Pick of the week
Top of the Pops: the final countdown
30 July, 7pm, BBC2
Jimmy Savile looks back on 42 years of boogying studio audiences.
Judah and Mohammad
31 July, 8pm, Channel 4
Sobering documentary following two 15-year-olds - one Israeli, one Palestinian - caught up in violence.
Teen Dads
31 July, 11.45pm, Channel 4
Ross, a 15-year-old father, wishes he'd bought his girlfriend "a doll or something instead".
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