Television
Brother to brother
Published 08 November 2007
McGovern's eye for detail makes his tales of working-class life a joy to watch
The Street BBC1
Say what you like about Jimmy McGovern, he's got chutzpah. Give him an hour of television and, so far as plot goes, he'll make the most of it. When he's on form, the sheer daring of his scripts reminds me of the short stories of Patricia Highsmith or Roald Dahl. Perhaps because he came to writing later in life - factory worker, gambler, teacher; he's done it all - he brazenly treads where other writers fear to go for sheer embarrassment. The trouble is, he's often not on form.
As he recently admitted, he should not have brought Cracker out of retirement as he did last year, and when I think of The Lakes, the hotel and outdoor sex drama starring John Simm and several dozen Herdwick sheep, I still blush. And while the first series of The Street, six dramas connected by the fact that all the characters live in the same rundown row of terraces in a fictional northern town, won him a Bafta, I still find it hard to disagree with the opinion of the reviewer on IMDb (the Internet Movie Database) who called it a "marathon of pain and contrived bad luck".
I wasn't exactly longing, then, to sit down in front of series two but, amazingly, it hit the spot. In Twin, David Thewlis played identical twins, Joe and Harry. Joe was married with two sons, and miserable. He loathed his job and he and his wife, Mary, constantly rowed about money. In addition, his mother lived with them, and she and Mary hated one another. Harry, a former soldier, was a bachelor, with cash in the bank and a big-breasted mistress to fool around with of an evening. One night, the brothers got together to watch the footie - only, midmatch, Harry choked on a lemon sherbet. Joe tried to help him but, at some point in the crucial minutes during which Harry's face turned first red and then purple, he guessed that he was going to die, at which point, Joe swapped their jerseys, and shoved his wedding ring on to Harry's finger. By the time the ambulance arrived, he'd adjusted his hair, altered his voice and - hey, presto! - Joe was Harry. Not even Mary could tell the difference.
It was that lemon sherbet that I loved: McGovern is strangely obsessed with a proletariat that many people - even those of us with working-class roots - no longer fully recognise, and his drama is full of cherishable retro touches like this; anyone else would have had the guy choking on a Domino's Pizza (he's also the only writer in Britain who has the priest turning up for a cup of tea each time something bad happens).
Using identical twins for dramatic effect is nothing new (remember Dead Ringers, in which Jeremy Irons played pervy twin gynaecologists); ditto the device of allowing a character to witness their own funeral, with chastening results. But I don't think that this matters. All you want is for the writer to explore the confusion and its aftermath in an interesting way, and McGovern certainly did that.
When Joe's mother worked out what he had done, far from being furious, she saw it as merely another chance to get at her daughter-in-law: how unhappy must Mary have made him to induce him to escape married life like this? Mary discovered the deception when she asked "Harry" to take his mother in now that Joe was gone. In the two heartbeats it took him to answer, she saw his reluctance, and something in it triggered recognition.
This rang true, somehow, and it reminded me of how well McGovern does male motivation. His women are often two-dimensional, but his men mostly convince. Priapic and pathetic by turns, they're always playing catch-up in a world that they believe is conspiring against them. McGovern may have his faults, but I still like him. This was also the week in which Stephen Poliakoff returned to our screens and, if you saw Joe's Palace on Sunday night, you'll know why I'm not reviewing it here; "unbearable" doesn't even begin to describe it. Given a choice between McGovern's dogged soap opera instincts and Poliakoff's ponderous vanity projects, I'll take McGovern, any day of the week.
Pick of the week
Learners
11 November, 9pm, BBC1
Comedy starring David Tennant as a geeky driving instructor.
My Boy Jack
11 November, 9pm, ITV
Daniel Radcliffe is John Kipling, immortalised in his father’s poem.
Baddiel & the Missing Nazi Billions
14 November, 10.40pm, BBC1
Should Jewish families receive restitution for lost possessions?
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