Thinking About It Only Makes It Worse (8 page)

Comparisons with the Bond franchise are bound to make hardcore
Star Wars
fans nervous. Most would balk at an open-ended series of adventures vaguely set in the
Star Wars
universe, but with the same variance of style, tone and competence that the Bond franchise has displayed. Will they have to endure different actors taking on the central characters? They’ve already seen Ewan McGregor struggle to fill Alec Guinness’s shoes. But, as the roles of Luke Skywalker, Han Solo and Princess Leia are taken forward, the opportunities for other actors to screw them up – or rather “put their own stamp on them” – are endless.

Will they have to cope with a moody Russell Crowe interpretation of Han in middle age, complete with inexplicable and shaky geordie accent? Will Maggie Smith turn an aged Queen Leia of the Universe into a wise-cracking old gossip? Will Mark Hamill be allowed to reprise the role he created or will he have to stand in line to audition with the likes of Bill Nighy, Steve Martin and that bloke from
Breaking Bad
? Or are Disney’s real intentions hiding in plain sight in that photo? Are they going to give the galaxy to the Great Mouse?

The prospect of a Disneyfied
Star Wars
would have appalled me 15 years ago. The thought of that corporate giant getting its weird three-fingered hands on the beloved space stories of my childhood would have seemed like sacrilege. Since then, of course, Jesus has desecrated his own altar and then set up as a money-changer in his own temple. And if you think that’s a hyperbolic way of describing the fact that George Lucas made three disappointing sci-fi films, you need to get online more.

As a feckless writer and comedian, I spend a lot of pub time railing against all the occasions when creative control is wrested from the people who have the ideas by the people who keep the accounts. So I find the story of the Star Wars franchise unsettling. Lucas had the successful idea and maintained rigid creative control over it, doubtless fending off the advances of avaricious predators who wanted to exploit or develop it differently. And yet that idea was more comprehensively ruined than if it had been left exposed to the worst and most idiotic corporate abuse imaginable.

So what’s to fear from Disney? They might make an entertaining film about a duck in space. It would be a lot edgier than Jar Jar Binks.

Disney didn’t hang about, as we now know, and episode seven is currently in production, with JJ Abrams directing and most of the stars of the first film reprising their roles. Which means, sadly, that it’ll be episode eight, at the earliest, before we see Russell Crowe attempt to wrestle Chewbacca, Bill Nighy get exasperated with R2-D2 or a duck feel the Force.

Laura Carmichael deserves to be congratulated. Few actors have achieved her kind of success. Her portrayal of Lady Edith in
Downton Abbey
is so effective, and so affecting, that the character has started to become real. Not just to seem real to people watching television, but actually to
be
. The fact that this became clear on the occasion of her West End debut playing another role in no way diminishes the achievement.

You may not be familiar with Lady Edith, or with
Downton Abbey
at all. Even if you are, you may pretend not to be. It’s not a particularly respectable show to admit to watching.

Or is that nonsense? In some ways, it’s unassailably respectable: a Sunday night costume drama, oozing the cream of the British acting profession. But it’s not particularly worthy or worthwhile, and yet neither is it trashy or amoral enough to be watched with irony. It falls equidistantly between the two vastly separated stools of
Our Friends in the North
and
RuPaul’s Drag Race
. Watching it is nothing to be proud of, but neither is it sufficiently shaming to be conversationally interesting.

I’ve seen every single episode. I think it might be my favourite programme. I enjoy it enormously. I also think it’s shit. Not badly acted or filmed, but appallingly scripted and structured. Utterly inept with regard to these elements of television production which I previously considered vital to a drama’s success – or certainly its enjoyability. Yet I undoubtedly do enjoy
Downton Abbey
, and not “because it’s so terrible”. I unironically enjoy it despite how bad it is. Is that what they call cognitive dissonance? Or is it just really liking footage of a stately home?

So Laura Carmichael deserves much credit for turning the implausible words and actions in the script into a believable character. Lady Edith is the second daughter of the Earl of Grantham, who owns Downton Abbey (which is where
Downton Abbey
is set – it is not a real abbey, so he is not an abbot), and she has a very rough time. The plainer middle sibling, she lives her life like an emotional Frank Spencer, her heart always metaphorically being dragged along on roller skates behind a bus. The men she
loves either die or get engaged to her sister or both; or are too old or jilt her at the altar or both. Everything Edith turns her hand to – driving, farming, journalism – is greeted with hostility and scorn. She’s definitely the unluckiest of the three Crawley sisters, and one of the others has died.

So, when the press night of a new production of
Uncle Vanya
at the Vaudeville theatre, in which Carmichael plays Sonya, was interrupted in a weird and unlucky way, I thought: “Of course, that
would
happen to Lady Edith.” And then I realised: Lady Edith has come to life.

This is what happened: in the closing moments of the play, Lady Edith (Sonya) was delivering a soft and moving final speech to Ken Stott (Vanya) in which she exhorts him to keep his pecker up, when Sir Peter Hall, who was in the third row of the stalls, started shouting, or at least talking. Accounts vary, but he definitely wasn’t whispering. Accounts also vary as to exactly what he definitely wasn’t whispering, but he definitely wasn’t not-whispering “Bravo!” The
Telegraph
reckons he said: “Stop, stop, stop. It doesn’t work and you don’t work. It is not good enough. I could be at home watching television,” while the
Guardian
thought “It’s not working, it’s just not working. It’s just like something on television” was nearer the mark.

Theatre being what it is, the sentiments conveyed by Hall are less surprising than the fact that he chose to express them during an actual performance. Wishing productions to stop and that you could be transported back home to the TV are familiar sentiments to all regular theatregoers, but it seemed rude of Hall to shout those desires so audibly, and it clashed with his subsequent verdict on the show as “a fine production with a superb company of actors”.

A couple of days later, Sir Peter provided the explanation: “I dropped off for a moment and on being woken by my wife I was briefly disorientated.” Well, we’ve all been there. Theatres
are warm, dark and quiet. The drama being played out on a slightly illuminated platform some yards away is often no more energising than a whispered midnight conversation at the nurses’ station of a restful hospital ward. If I had a penny for every time I’d fallen asleep while watching a play, I’d nearly have enough for an interval drink. Genuinely.

As apologies for heckles go, “Sorry, I was asleep!” isn’t ideal. It doesn’t necessarily mean the production is bad or boring – and the critical consensus seems to be that this one is neither – but it’s hardly a ringing endorsement. “This show sent me so soundly to sleep that, when I was shaken awake by my wife, I’d completely forgotten where I was or what was going on” is unlikely to be put up in lights outside the theatre.

But Sir Peter had to own up to being asleep or he’d seem boorish and brutal. His priority was to clarify that, as he said, “Remarks made in the resulting confusion were not in any way related to
Uncle Vanya
.” I believe him because I think they were in every way related to
Downton Abbey
– and Lady Edith. Sir Peter’s unconscious mutterings make it very clear that he is a regular viewer and has been utterly captivated by Carmichael’s performance.

He walked into that theatre with his head full of Lady Edith’s misfortunes: he was nervous for her, wishing her well, yet fearful that something would go wrong for her, as it always does. Consequently, when surprised in a half-waking, half-sleeping state, his fears Touretted out: he found himself saying the worst things his unconscious could imagine – precisely the remarks that Edith/Carmichael least wanted to hear.

Even while playing a lead role on the press night of a starry and classy West End show, which coincided with the broadcast of her massive TV hit, Laura Carmichael didn’t seem successful or fortunate to Hall. She didn’t seem like a rising talent, a celebrity, a household name, a winner, the centre of a maelstrom
of opportunity. She remained every ounce the luckless Edith. Now that’s acting.

I was recently infuriated by a study. I’m not talking about the type of room – I wasn’t maddened by a den or seething at the sight of a home office. I was annoyed by a “survey”, a “report”, some “research”. It was given all sorts of titles in the press, none of which was “pile of sanctimonious crap”, which is a shame because that’s what it was.

Some people at Netmums, which I’m guessing is the Pepsi to Mumsnet’s Coke (irresponsible though it is of me to mention either high-sugar drink when children might be reading), had decided the world might be a better place if they found some way of slagging off
The Simpsons
. And, while they were at it,
The Flintstones
and
Peppa Pig
and
The Gruffalo
and
My Family
and
Outnumbered
. All of those enjoyable entertainments, and
My Family
, were criticised for their negative depictions of fathers. It was like the RSPCA moaning that
Tom and Jerry
is an unrepresentative depiction of the behaviour of the domestic cat or the Institute of Hospitality complaining that
Fawlty Towers
puts people off going to hotels.

It wasn’t just a diatribe written by the website’s staff members: 2,000 parents had been asked their opinions, although I’m not sure in what context and I refuse to find out. But they must’ve been caught in a whingeing mood because they seemed determined to take popular culture personally. Ninety-three per cent thought that the typical comedically bungling TV dad doesn’t accurately reflect what fathers contribute to families in real life. They were not then asked whether or not that’s a problem – whether it is the job of a show such as
The Simpsons
to accurately reflect family life, whether such shows have ever implied they’re an accurate
reflection of anything at all and whether Homer Simpson accurately reflects the number of fingers most fathers have.

Had they been asked those things, I hope they would have responded along the lines of “No, of course that’s not a problem – it’s just that you asked whether various characters in popular culture, which are clearly the product of comic exaggeration and in some cases surreal invention, were accurate reflections of reality, and they’re obviously not, so I said they weren’t.” But I doubt that’s how it would have gone because 46% of those surveyed thought that these characters could make children believe that all dads are “useless” and 28% felt that these depictions amounted to a “very subtle form of discrimination”. So they do seem quite het up about it, which I think is stupid and depressing.

My state of mind was not improved by the remarks of Netmums’ founder, Siobhan Freegard, which accompanied the report. “It’s never been harder to be a father – but good dads have never been more needed by their families,” she said, which seems reasonable enough until you think about it for a second and realise that she’s wrong on both counts. There have been many times in human history when it’s been harder to be a father – during the Black Death, for example – and also many times when families have needed fathers more – the tens of thousands of years when they were expected to hunt and kill all the family’s food springs to mind. Sorry if you think I’m being petty but, if she’s going to claim that loads of comedies that people enjoy are corroding our society, she oughtn’t to kick off with a historically inept statement.

She wasn’t finished: “So it seems perverse we are telling men to step up and be involved, while running them down in the media.” Who is this “we”? Whoever wrote
The Flintstones
? The
Peppa Pig
production team? She presumably counts herself among the people who tell men to “step up and be involved” – fair enough – but is she annoyed that she can’t also vet all scripts
for comedies and children’s programmes for deviations from that message? Does she expect the culture to speak in unison? Does she believe that Fred Flintstone saying “Yabba-dabba-doo!” amounts to an advocacy of shouting gibberish? Maybe she thinks Miranda Hart’s pratfalls undermine the good work of the Health and Safety Executive.

“Some people claim ‘it’s just a joke’,” she continued, “but there’s nothing amusing about taking away good role models for young boys.” Yes, there is. Once again, she’s strayed into untruth. For example, when Homer Simpson says “Mmm … floor pie” on seeing a slice of pie on the floor, that is amusing, and yet he is not being a positive role model. The negative role models Siobhan Freegard has commissioned a report to complain about do amusing things all the time.

What there is, for practical comedy-writing purposes, “nothing amusing about” is good role models: a caring, conscientious father who doesn’t get into scrapes – that’s the stuff of government information films, not funny programmes. And the “useless dad” may not be a fair reflection of society but, if it was complete invention, the characters wouldn’t resonate. Accident-prone Daddy Pig, or Hugh Dennis’s hapless character in
Outnumbered
, may not be representative examples of modern fatherhood but they obviously strike a chord or those shows wouldn’t be watched by millions.

This report is at once joyless and opportunistic. It seeks to say something headline-grabbing and preachy in order to garner positive coverage for a website, and is content to make a victim of some of the finest products of the noble human urge to amuse and entertain. There are many things wrong with humanity but I’m fairly sure that funny sitcoms and cartoons about family life aren’t among them.