Playing for laughs
Simon Hoggart
You could tell Henry VIII (ITV) was going to be a hoot from the beginning, when Joss Ackland, playing the dying Henry VII in a two-line cameo role, told his son: 'You must secure the family line. Have a son. Urrrghhhh!'
"Ave a son? Nah, I'm trying to give 'em up, hurr hurr!' would have been a good reply. Ray Winstone, as the new king, is quoted in Radio Times as saying delightedly, 'I'm a kid from Plaistow and I'm playing one of the most famous kings of England!' What was unusual was that he played the king as if he were a kid from Plaistow. We don't know how Henry spoke, but it seems unlikely that his accent was from EastEnders. On meeting Anne Boleyn (`Enn Blinn') for the first time: 'Oovis rose yer brought wiv yer?' When he barked at Wolsey (David Suchet in a comedy prosthetic nose) — he only just left out the 'Oil' — I assumed for a moment he was addressing a man whose surname was Wools.
And the laughs kept coming. Charles Dance, trying to seize the throne: `Go back, prepare your armies, and meet me outside London in three days.' I know London was smaller then, but he could have been more precise. One waited for 'You know, that lay-by wiv a burger van on the All.'
When the battle took place, involving the usual handful of extras, it resembled a kung-fu movie, a cheap-rent Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. I swear I saw a ninja blade. Then Buckingham is tortured — at least Charles Dance can do over-the-top agony — and finally topped. As the blade fell, twin spurts of blood shot out and precisely covered the eyes of two women in the (unfeasibly small) crowd. Far from bringing home the raw brutality of death in Tudor England, it merely looked like the Tories' Tony Blair 'Demon eyes' poster of 1997.
Next, lots of shots of Henry riding, riding, riding, followed by shagging, shagging, shagging. 'Wake up, king's here!' as they said in those days. Then, towards the very end, I thought that perhaps they had decided to play it straight and not as an upmarket Carry On film. I stopped laughing for around ten minutes as Anne Boleyn faced trial, and the king hung
guiltily round in the shadows of the palace.
There was the affecting scene as she faced death, bending down for the last time to kiss her daughter, not knowing that one day this little girl would grow up to become Dame Judi Dench. Her courage in the face of the jeering crowd, the pourboire passed to the swordsman, the whip of the blade — all beautifully handled. Then just when you thought they'd got all that right, someone holds up her severed head, dripping blood, looking sillier than anything even Madame Tussaud's could have come up with. Remember Monty Python's 'Sam Peckinpah's Salad Days' sketch. in which people gushed blood when they were hit by tennis balls? It was funnier than that.
Absolutely Fabulous (BBC1) returned. It was a terrible mistake. It's become a cliché. At least John Cleese in Fax,Ity Towers and Ricky Gervais in The Office knew after two series to leave us with our memories, or anyway the endless repeats. If you make a series in which the joke depends on the limitless self-indulgence of the two main characters, then you have to write, produce and direct it with fierce and unsparing precision. Letting it slide sloppily around, like Patsy after her third bottle of Bolly, makes for feeble, painful viewing. By the same token, because Saffy is meant to be boring, her character must actually be fascinating. Now she's dreary.
It was like watching children put on a show for their parents in the living room. At first you are enchanted, then you think it's going on a bit, and finally they keep hamming up nothing because they've got your attention and don't want to let go. Well, it's time for tea and bed now, girls. Ab Fab used to be unmissable. Now it's embarrassing.
For a lesson in how to do comedy, you had to watch Behind the Laughter . . . (BBC1), the first of a two-parter in which Bob Monkhouse talks about great comedians of the past, and in the case of Ken Dodd interviews one of the great comics of the present. If you've ever seen Dodd live you will know that he is infinitely better than the mere shadow he projects on television. He is a magnificent clown, a supreme national treasure, and you should catch him while he's still here. I would say that he gave us a master-class in comedy, but the best education is no use if the talent isn't there. I could get a master-class from Michael Vaughan but it wouldn't make me a batsman.
Can I recommend Grumpy Old Men (BBC2). even though I'm in it? It sounded an awful idea — just a lot of blokes of a certain age sounding off about what's gone wrong with the world — and I was very unwilling. But I was tempted into it by Matthew Parris and a not bad cheque, and, amazingly, it works. My contributions are rather workaday, but many of the other grumps are brilliantly astute and funny. Even cheery young women would enjoy it.
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