Most of us don't go to church, but that doesn't mean we won't be subjected to a sermon on a Sunday.
On the BBC, JK Rowling in The Casual Vacancy (BBC1, Sunday, 9pm) will tell us how awful and selfish the middle class are, living in their Farrow and Ball painted ghettos, and on Channel 4, Indian Summers (Channel 4, Sunday, 9pm) will tell us awful and selfish the upper class were when they ruled India. Here endeth the lesson, but where on earth is the drama?
In The Casual Vacancy, it came in the form of a whodunnit, but a terribly clumsy one. Everyone knows that if you ever find yourself in a television murder mystery, do not, under any circumstances, ever say "over my dead body" because a few minutes later you will be the dead body. Sure enough, about half way through the first episode of The Casual Vacancy, Rory Kinnear blithely said that a new spa would be built in the village over his dead body. Ten minutes later, he was lying in the street. Dead. The first victim.
One of his neighbours, Shirley Mollison, played by Julia McKenzie, was among the first to hear the news and appeared to be upset. "How awful," she said, hand over mouth, "to die in public like that". You see, Shirley Mollison is a selfish snob obsessed with appearance and status so dying in public is the worst form of death because it's so embarrassing. What will the neighbours think?
Most of the characters in The Casual Vacancy have a similar lack of subtlety and depth: they are either horrendous, horrible aristocrats that insist on commoners leaving by the staff entrance, or they are horrid little social climbers like Shirley Mollison, or they are noble caring campaigners like Rory Kinnear's character who gave a long speech about why the community centre in his village should not be turned into a spa. Gentrification and the fact we increasingly live in communities that are much less mixed is a valid and important issue, but playing goodies and baddies with it, as The Casual Vacancy does in the most cartoonish way, is irritating rather than illuminating.
Indian Summers is slightly more subtle, but only slightly. It is set in India in the 1930s when the cracks are starting to show in the British empire and it got down to the issues straight away. First, a caption on screen: "1932. A few thousand British civil servants rule an entire subcontinent". Then a sign outside a building : "No dogs or Indians". Then we meet the characters. Here we go again. Horrible , venal baddies on one side; noble, selfless goodies on the other. Life - and drama is supposed to be about life - just isn't that simple.
Indian Summers did try to be more subtle with some of the characters and perhaps in time it will move beyond the stereotypes in future episodes. Part of the problem is that it has chosen as its subject a very familiar, indeed overly-familiar, episode in British history, rather than something more surprising. It also has a vapid cast doing in-a-hot-place acting first pioneered in Tenko, with the marvellous exception of Julie Walters, playing a matriarch of empire. When she's on screen, suddenly, everything glitters and buzzes. But then she's off again and we're back to normal.
And why show Indian Summers and The Casual Vacancy at the same time on the same night anyway? If it's to create the excitement of a head-to-head competition, there's very little point now that so many viewers watch on catch-up at all times of the day. And if excitement is the aim, why not choose subjects that aren't already wearily familiar to every Sunday-night viewer: the whodunnit and the 1930s historical drama? Give us some a drama set in the future, or on another planet. Give us a drama about South America, or Alaska. Give us a drama that isn't about posh people, or big houses. And don't give us a sermon. Give us something new.
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