This article was originally published in The Courier on 11th January 2013.
The
7:39: Monday and Tuesday,
BBC1
Secrets
of the Living Dolls: Monday,
Channel 4
Paul
Whitelaw
A Ray Davies song in waiting, David
Morrissey's Carl was your typical commuter: an unremarkable
middle-aged businessman sleepwalking through his drably unchanging
routine. Grey of suit and beard – even his facial hair looked tired
– he had the unassuming demeanour of a melancholy bear, a gentle
soul both lost and harmless.
Which was just as well, as his behaviour
in romantic drama The 7.39 could easily have come across as
sad and creepy: a stalker in sheep's clothing.
Instead he emerged as a likeable, if
foolish, character whose whirlwind affair with Sally, a younger woman
and fellow unsatisfied commuter played by Sheridan Smith, tore at the
heart of this affecting little two-part saga.
Despite raking over very familiar
territory – the concept of thwarted drifters gaining a new lease of
life from a fleeting romance has informed everything from Brief
Encounter to Lost in Translation – it was saved by
mature, sensitive writing from David Nicholls and sweetly underplayed
performances from Morrissey, Smith and, in her stock role of unfairly
maltreated spouse, Olivia Colman.
Nicholls toyed with our allegiances
by sketching each of his principal characters in a sympathetic light.
Even Sally's fiancée, an overbearing fitness buffoon played by a
suitably dense-looking Sean Maguire, was essentially well-meaning.
This triggered an interesting subversion of the usual demands of
romantic fiction, where we root for the starry-eyed lovebirds and
hope they stay together at the end. Instead I found myself hoping
their flirting would lead nowhere, and that Carl would see sense and
return to the bosom of his lovely wife and kids.
It's testament to the quiet depth and
pull of Nicholls' writing that I was actually angling for two hours
of drama during which nothing remotely dramatic or untoward happened.
It was like a Bizarro EastEnders: I didn't want anything bad
to happen to these nice, ordinary people. She may be renowned for
her extreme sobbing skills, but I doubt even the most sadistic viewer
actually yearned to witness the inevitable tear-sodden scene of
Colman discovering her husband's infidelity.
While it never added up to anything
more meaningful than “the grass isn't always greener”, The
7.39 engaged with its themes in an entirely believable and
unpretentious way. Buoyed by Nicholls' ear for natural-sounding
dialogue and the informal strength of his cast, it was a touching
study of human frailty and the runaway madness of the heart.
Despite being produced by the
geniuses responsible for such dire point-and-gawp travesties such as
the Big Fat Gypsy franchise and The Man With the 10-Stone
Testicles, Secrets of the Living Dolls was a surprisingly
inoffensive documentary about yet another subculture that most of us
have never heard of.
The subjects in this case were a
selection of men who enjoy transforming themselves into women via
skin-tight rubber masks and flesh suits. Why? The only vague reasons
given ranged from mere escapism to the need to feel young, attractive
and special. Whether they gained any sexual satisfaction from their
largely secret pursuit remained curiously unclear.
Despite fleeting
references to the anatomical accuracy of the suits, it was if the
director, stricken by an unforeseen rash of prudishness, had little
interest in exploring this phenomenon beyond its most superficial
layer.
Instead we were simply presented with
a group of harmless hobbyists whose only demand was for society to
judge them kindly. And that was that. It was as bland and impassive
as the sex-doll masks worn by the men, and while one could arguably
applaud the programme's essentially neutral, non-judgemental approach
– I never got the impression that anyone was being mocked – it
isn't merely enough to present an unusual subset of society without
any kind of deeper insight.
“Cuh, what do you think of that
then?” is hardly the most profound authorial comment.
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