Television
Our mutual success
Anthony Quinn
The wizardry of Boz lives on. Martin Chuzzlewit (1843-44) wasn't one of Dick- ens's great commercial successes, but 150 i Years later the Beeb (BBC2, 9.30 p.m.) s utak-Mg it pay — and this despite having to contend with Cracker (ITV, 9 P.m.) of a Monday night. Director Pedr James and scriptwriter David Lodge have worked wonders distilling both the plot and the pathos of the book to serve up a brew that is unmistakably Dickensian. Their aPProach is respectful rather than Inventive: it will take an exceptional talent to translate the grotesque and hyper-real landscapes the novelist mapped in his Prose. The complaint often filed against classic serials is their tendency to beautify periods of history that were actually poor, squalid and vicious. That the programme- makers had no intention of glossing over ,any unsightliness was clear from Chuzzlewit, very first episode, as the Peck- Tiff sisters hitched up their skirts to tiptoe "trough the slime of an unpaved London street.
And talking of slime, Tom Wilkinson is giving one of the finest — and funniest television performances of recent years as the ar ch - hypoc r it e Mr Pccksniff. It is not merely that he looks the part, with his lips beatifically pursed and his hair brushed Upright like some Victorian teddy boy. Ilkinson's marvellous repertoire of expressions and gestures reveal Pecksmff as a man who exists only in (and for) the Company of other people: the homely gardener's smock he craftily dons before answering the door to old Martin C. huzzlewit (Paul Scofield) speaks of a life devoted to tending the narrow plot of Wilkinsona pearance. But this is no one-man show. W is a stand-out in a cast of stand-outs, most particularly those in lesser roles: Maggie Steed as Mrs Todgers, John ,,'''''llls as Chuffey and Steve Nicolson as Mark Tapley, forever in search of reasons to be 'jolly'. Oddly enough the least successful character is probably the most famous in the book. Mrs Gamp is the nightnurse from hell — indeed, she might almost be the star of a horror movie called, er, Nightnurse From Hell — and is played to bibulous perfection by Elizabeth Spriggs. The problem is that she's one of Dickens's most boring creations. The novelist was hilarious about drink, as about much else, but I think it's the hangover from drinking, rather than drunkenness itself, which brings out his best. Gamp is just a one-note soak, and the story drops dead every time she appears.
In this week's episode, Pete Postleth- waite's Montague Tigg, having effected the transition from monocled scrounger to double-dealing scoundrel, blackmails Jonas Chuzzlewit (Keith Allen), though from the murderous looks the latter is sending out Tigg may have got himself an albatross instead of a gull. By the end the swindler had his claws in Pecksniff, whom he persuaded to 'invest' £10,000. 'The business is safe?' As safe as Lloyds', Tigg replies, and a distant knell rings through the line. Classic adaptations, or heritage television as its detractors call it, are commonly thought to be out of touch. Let no one say that Martin Chuzzlewit wants for contemporary resonances: everything from embezzlement and real-estate fraud to sexual harassment and wife beating are put in the dock. Greed and selfishness were evidently as much the bedrock of society in the 1830s as they are today. The only difference is: we don't have a Dickens.
On the other hand, we do have Garry Shandling, star of The Lany Sanders Show (BBC2, 11.45 p.m.), which sounds like — but isn't — another run-of-the- mill American sitcom. I happened upon it channel-surfing late one Friday night, and have been addicted ever since. Its gimmick is to cut between the slick talk- show of Letterman-type host Sanders and the rather more anxious goings-on behind the scenes, where we are privy to the rampant egomania and insecurity of television people. Worst offender is Larry's idiot sidekick, Hank (Jeffrey Tambor), whose vaulting ambition ('Hey now!') keeps taking a pratfall on the hur- dles of competence. Then there is the show's producer Arthur (Rip Torn), all bulldog jowls and barking camaraderie as he tries to keep Larry's mind off the rat- ings. There is no reason why this should be especially funny. Each 25 minute episode is characterised by a plotless, almost aimless indolence, and there's lit- tle in the way of actual jokes, or even great lines.
And yet — and yet it adds up to a superb comedy of embarrassment, an emotion which television people are apparently less capable of handling than the rest of us.
Previous page
