Him & Her - End of Series Review

Friday 28th December 2012

I have something shameful to admit. I had never watched Him & Her before this series. I know – I’m embarrassed to even say it. I feel like everyone must have been pointing and giving me odd looks as I missed the first two series, like the time I walked all the way back from the library oblivious to the fact I was having a massive nosebleed.

When I did stumble across the first episode of series three, tucked away on BBC Three Sunday evenings in the shadow of Peep Show on the other side, I was absolutely hooked. Him & Her is without a doubt one of the best comedies on television right now, and I’m a little bit ashamed I wasn’t aware of it before.

If you’re unfamiliar with the show, it generally goes like this – we never leave the grotty flat of Becky and Steve, the couple played with complete believability and naturalism by Sarah Solemani and Russell Tovey. As they lounge round their flat they are interrupted each week without fail by the supporting cast, from odd neighbour Dan (Joe Wilkinson) to Becky’s sister Laura (Kerry Howard), probably the most brilliantly horrendous character on television. Often crude but always somehow lovely and charming, you’d think being stuck in the same flat with the same group each week would become repetitive, but rather each episode forms a beautifully crafted, perfectly observed half hour of comedy, usually with an undertone of some delicately touching drama, and carried off by superb performances from every single cast member.

The main plots that gently rumbled along through this series were Steve building up to proposing to Becky (done with the help of homemade Deal or No Deal boxes), a blossoming relationship between Dan and Shelley, and the unhappy union of the nightmarish Laura and her possibly gay fiancé Paul. Sunday night marked the end of the current series with a Christmas special, an occasion which doesn’t seem the most obvious to spend with the lazy couple, and indeed the episode opened with them in bed dipping turkey into mugs of gravy. Soon the guests descended, including Steve’s often absent dad, leading to a quietly heartfelt subplot playing out alongside the comedy provided by Laura arriving with a karaoke machine and a whistle, gifting everyone with Mothercare vouchers and reacting with barely concealed disdain when Shelley splashed out on an antique necklace for her.

It was another warm and at times surprisingly touching episode, just what I had come to expect - I may have only watched one series, but I already feel at home in Steve and Becky’s flat. Not that I’d be welcome there, of course; I’d get in the way of them watching TV.

Put simply, I can’t believe what I’ve been missing out on. If you made the same mistake as I did, it’s not too late to redeem yourself. Just quietly treat yourself to the DVD boxset, and we need never speak of this oversight again.

Viva Forever! - Review

Not a TV review, but an amazing musical which I reviewed for the Yorker.

Monday 10th December 2012

 

Viva Forever, the long-awaited musical based around the hits of the Spice Girls, has finally arrived to spice up the West End. For anyone who lived and breathed the Spice Girls in their 90s childhood (and if you didn’t, then you made some poor life choices), this was a much anticipated chance to relive the heyday of girl power.

Having bumped into Olympian Louis Smith on my way to the theatre, I was already pretty hysterically excited, which is probably the perfect mood to be in for this musical. Produced by Mamma Mia mastermind Judy Craymer and penned by comedy legend Jennifer Saunders, Viva Forever follows Viva (Hannah John-Kamen), a talent show hopeful and member of a spirited girl group, whose loyalty to her mother and friends is tested as she struggles with overnight fame and the machinations of her mentor (Sally Dexter).

While satirising the evils of a contrived reality show is hardly a new idea, even the caricatures are tackled with such verve that it feels fresh. The plot plays with the themes of the original Girl Power group – friendship, loyalty and fun – but bases little on the band themselves. Perhaps I’m biased, but it felt much more clever and self-aware than Craymer’s previous hit musical.

The audience were buzzing with excitement before the curtain was raised, and a fantastic opening sending up talent show clichés before exploding into the unmistakeable sound of Wannabe sent the atmosphere into fever pitch. The exuberant cast, particularly the band members (Siobhan Athwal, Lucy Phelps, and Dominique Provost-Chalkley), brought irrepressible energy, and portrayed the all-important group dynamic completely believably. I only wish we’d seen more of them – whilst Viva was wonderful, the relationship between the group, particularly during their anarchic rendition of Stop, was brilliant, and could easily have borne more time on stage. The ending was pure uplifting joy, even before the obligatory sing-a-long to finish.

The show bears the clear stamp of Saunders, with Sally Ann Triplett as Viva’s mother occasionally resembling Ab Fab’s Eddie, and also in Saunders’ keen eye for humour in the songs - her re-imaginings of Too Much and 2 Become 1 were particular highlights. Overall the Spice Girls’ back catalogue was wrestled into a narrative surprisingly well, and a nice balance was struck between classics, imaginative re-workings and mash-ups, with even some lesser known songs included (although we could have done without Let Love Lead the Way. No one likes that one).

For those of us whose childhood was defined by the Spice Girls, it is undoubtedly one of the best feel-good musicals around. Suffice to say, if the thought of leaping out of your seat to bounce along to Spice Up Your Life fills you with dread, then it’s advisable to steer clear. But the irresistible charm of the lively cast and the enduringly catchy music mean it’s hard to walk away from Viva Forever without a huge smile and the urge to listen to Wannabe on repeat. A reminder that no girl band has come close to the iconic hits, charisma and sheer joy the Spice Girls brought, it’s fantastic to have a home for them on the West End – I will definitely be going again.

Goodnight Britain - Review

Sunday 2nd December 2012

 

After being the victim of a night-time assault in second year by a housemate who revealed his sleepwalking habit by appearing in my room and throwing his toiletries bag at me, Goodnight Britain looked to me to be a timely insight into unusual sleeping habits.

According to the documentary, my housemate is one of half a million Britons who suffer from parasomnia, the technical term for sleep-walking, talking, and in the case of one woman featured on the programme, screaming and running about in the belief that you are being assaulted. I sympathised with her frazzled housemate.

Goodnight Britain also tackled sufferers with common problem sleep behaviours such as snoring and insomnia. The first step involved going all Carrie Mathison on the sleep sufferers and rigging their homes with night vision cameras, which were closely monitored by two sleep experts (who weirdly never seemed to need sleep) in their ‘sleep mobile’, where they proceeded to make borderline creepy observations such as “she looks like a good sleeper.”

To begin with it was hard not to see the funny side of the unusual night time activity; I have a friend who talks in her sleep and once hosted an imaginary dinner party where she offered me cheese canapés. In such cases, it’s easy to regard parasomnia as pretty harmless. However the show soon highlighted the serious side of dodgy sleeping, as one participant was suspended from his job as a van driver due to his suffering from obstructive sleep apnoea, a terrifying condition which meant he stopped breathing in between snores.

The insights into the science behind a good night’s sleep were fascinating, but stretched out to two hour long episodes things became increasingly tedious. In the first episode we watched the sufferers in their homes, before watching them again in a special ‘sleep house’, which felt like a particularly dull episode of Big Brother. It wasn’t until the second episode that they actually underwent treatment, a repetitive affair of analysing each night’s sleep, until the interesting tips about “sleep hygiene” and how to treat insomnia were buried under all the content. Condensed into one hour we could have avoided all the unnecessary attempts to inject drama with the most clichéd TV terms available – apparently treating the various conditions would mean “pushing sleepers to their limit”. Sometimes it’s better to just admit that you can’t wring that much drama out of watching someone try and sleep with a mouth guard in.

Nevertheless it was great to see the participants overcome the night behaviours that tormented them, and to see snorers returning from their banishment to the sofa. As for sleep walkers, apparently the solution is to rig their doors with alarms so they can’t get out of their bedrooms – I’ll definitely be trying that one out.