This article was originally published in The Courier on 9th August 2014.
In
the Club: Tuesday, BBC One
Siblings:
Thursday, BBC Three
Paul
Whitelaw
Even without seeing her name in the
credits, loyal TV hounds would've recognised In the Club as
the work of Kay Mellor. From Band of Gold to Fat Friends
and The Syndicate, her signature style runs as follows:
assemble a group of predominantly female characters in an enclosed
environment – a red-light district, a slimming club etc. - and
trace their various ups and downs.
You could probably suggest any group
setting to Mellor – a sewage farm, a terrorist cell, a UKIP sex
cult – and she'd conjure a bittersweet ensemble drama around it.
Not that she's a hack by any means. Her formula could easily come
across as cynical were it not for her obvious gifts as a dramatist.
As evinced by episode one of this
engaging drama, she has a knack for creating empathetic characters
struggling with dire and unusual circumstances. That's more or less
the essence of all drama, but Mellor harnesses it skilfully (for the
most part: more on this later).
Her protagonists in this case are a
group of pregnant women from different walks of life who come
together via their weekly antenatal class. They include Katherine
Parkinson as Kim, a gay woman carrying the child of a man who
artificially inseminated her partner 15 years ago (a surprise twist
revealed that Kim was actually impregnated by more traditional,
furtive means), and Rosie, a bullied teenage girl who's been hiding
her pregnancy from her widowed dad.
After seeking motherly advice via
Kim's pregnancy blog, Rosie burst into the class having gone into
labour. Despite her trauma, she gave birth to a healthy baby as
kindly Kim leant support. So far, so acceptably dramatic.
Unfortunately, Mellor – who also
directs – spiralled into inadvertent camp during a climactic,
winsomely-scored montage in which Rosie's dad crashed his van as his
daughter nurtured her newborn in hospital. Have this poor family not
suffered enough? Apparently not, reckons Mellor. Despite its obvious
sincerity, her writing is often clumsily schematic.
I also wasn't entirely convinced by
the central thread of Diane's secretly unemployed, debt-ridden
husband, Rick, deciding on a whim to rob a bank. Desperate men are
often driven to extreme measures, but posing as a bomb-toting bank
robber to buy your children pizza stretched credulity.
It's fortunate, then, that Rick is
portrayed by the excellent Will Mellor (no relation), who radiates
everyman pathos without ever overdoing it. The scene in which he
begged, with shades of Boys from the Blackstuff, for work on
a building site was particularly touching. Likewise, his sincere,
almost tearful apologies to the terrified bank teller were
affectingly played.
It's frustrating, as these smaller
moments have far more emotional impact than La Mellor's more
melodramatic flourishes. Nevertheless, I'll be back for more. Daft,
cloying overindulgences aside, she's a propulsive storyteller.
Similarly promising is Siblings,
a sharp new sitcom about a dysfunctional brother and sister duo.
Fresh Meat writer Keith Akushie takes a gilded leaf from
Seinfeld's book by miring his characters in selfishness and
idiocy.
Like George Costanza, Hannah, played by Fresh Meat
star Charlotte Ritchie, puts Herculean effort into her lazy
self-interest, while oblivious Dan is more of an overbearing,
bumblingly needy type: imagine a slightly nicer cousin of Jez from
Peep Show.
These obvious influences mesh rather
nicely. This first episode, as predictable though some of it was,
suggested Akushie has a neat grasp of escalating farce, and the two
leads fill their roles with just the right amount of warped
likeability. Their flailing misfortune may grow on you.
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