Television
Why Vronsky?
Simon Hoggart
There was one terrifically erotic moment in the first episode of Anna Karen- ina (Channel 4). Kitty is playing on the piano, where she is joined by Levin. He at first echoes the tune she is playing, then begins to branch out on his own, the theme he plays complementing and enhancing hers. It's a cliché that the sexiest possible shot is of a bedroom door closing, from the outside — that's a silly line peddled by Ronald Reagan — but this time the metaphor really worked. It was a short scene, but a powerful one, helped by the fact that Douglas Henshall, whose wild untamed hair gives him the manner of a hippy dot.com tycoon, actually looks sexy. (We later see him receiving oral sex in a brothel, and he manages to look as if he enjoys that more than any other of the numerous sexual activities depicted in part one.) If Anna had fallen for Levin, we could have understood it. As it is, she wrecks her life for the sake of Vronsky, who reminds me of Major James Hewitt, a more recent love-rat, whose affair with a much-loved and beautiful aristocrat was also greeted with the same cry from millions of people, `For heaven's sake, why him?' Rarely have I seen less sexual tension between two peo- ple, even while they were having sex. (Or rather flashing innumerable half-second shots of flailing limbs.) We're told that this new production has a 'modern' feel, which it does, though I'm not certain that's a good idea. It needs a certain distance and formality to remind us of what an unimaginable risk Anna is tak- ing. In a 'modern' drama series, threshing legs and arms usually mean sexual and hence psychological fulfilment; if one party is escaping from a terminally tedious part- ner, all the better for them. But Anna was playing Russian roulette with five bullets in the six chambers. Kevin McKidd is a per- fectly competent actor, and he has lots of blond hair, but we can't believe anyone would destroy herself for the sake of him. In the scene where Anna says of her hus- band, 'I had to tell him,' the emotional tur- moil would have been appropriate if she had said, 'I had to tell him we had a flat tyre.'
I caught up with The Naked Chef (BBC 2) for the first time this week. Indeed, so great is my devotion to Spectator readers that I actually made one of the dishes chicken with its breast stuffed with Parma ham, lemon, thyme and butter — and it wasn't at all bad, though it took a lot longer to make than Jamie Oliver implied. His schtick is to do everything at immense speed, which leaves him plenty of time for larking around with his nieces and doing whacky uncle-type things, such as tying sponges to their tummies and using then' to clean the car. As with Ground Force, you watch it not for the handy hints, but for the camaraderie. For a moment your sad and empty life is illuminated by the matiness of Jamie, Charlie and Alan. And of course, the quicker you talk (`So, whack it on a plate, wop it into the old oven . ' ) the more people have to buy your books so they can actually follow the recipes. Which is why the naked chef has two in the top five.
Black Cab, (BBC 2) a series of ten- minute dramas all set in the back of Lon- don taxis, didn't quite work. Chekhov could distil a lifetime's observation of the human condition into one tiny phial of words, but most BBC scriptwriters can't. The result was that each had the feel of a Tale Of The Unexpected, though without the literary sophistication. And the back of a cab makes an awfully samey backdrop. The Rise and Fall of Mo Mowlam, part of Channel 4's season on New Labour, was excellent, gripping and full of the psycho- logical drama which was in inadequate sup- ply in Anna. Karenina and, sadly, more or less absent from Black Cab. But real poli- tics, as opposed to stylised, tedious inter- views, is exciting and dramatic. Which is why it's inexplicable that BBC 2 is cutting out so much of this kind of programming.
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