The Spectator - 29.02.2020

the spectator | 29 february 2020 | http://www.spectator.co.uk 43

Television

Seeking closure

James Walton

As in many thrillers, the characters on dis-

play in Flesh and Blood (ITV, Monday to

Thursday) often seemed locked in a fierce

competition as to which of them we could

trust the least. The early front runner was

Mark (Stephen Rea), a retired surgeon

whom the not-long widowed Viv (Frances-

ca Annis) introduced to her three grown-

up children as her new boyfriend. But was

Mark all he appeared to be? And if not,

was this necessarily a bad thing — given

that what he appeared to be was spectacu-

larly shifty?

Soon, though, the grown-up children

had plenty of other people to worry about,

including themselves, as they messed up

their lives in an impressive variety of ways.

Helen (Claudie Blakley), first seen sucking

needfully on a gin and tonic, was a high-

flying NHS management consultant, whose

neglected husband proved susceptible to

any ladies pretending to share his inter-

ests, however uninteresting. (‘I rewired the

whole place myself,’ he told one woman in

a pub during a particularly comprehensive

description of his DIY activities. ‘Really?’

she replied, leaving him immediately smit-

ten.) Natalie (Lydia Leonard) had spent

the past five years waiting for her married

lover to initiate a much-promised divorce

rather than merely repeating his catch-

phrase, ‘Leave it with me’. Jake (Russell

Tovey), a recovering alcoholic and fitness

instructor, was estranged from his own

wife after running up huge gambling debts,

and now sought to clear them by becoming

a gigolo for an older and impeccably

empowered local solicitor. But was she

actually as happy as she claimed to keep

the relationship purely financial?

Meanwhile, coming up fast on the rails

in the untrustworthiness stakes was Mary

(Imelda Staunton), Viv’s next-door neigh-

bour on the Sussex coast. At first sight,

Mary was a classic Good Soul: selfless to

the point of self-martyring, a reliable sup-

plier of freshly baked cakes and a woman

whose two main ways of announcing her

presence were ‘Yoo-hoo’ and ‘It’s only me’.

Yet, before long, you couldn’t help notic-

Theatre

Changing the bard

Lloyd Evans

The Upstart Crow

Gielgud Theatre, booking until 25 April

Collapsible

Bush Theatre, until 21 March

A Moorish princess shipwrecked on the

English coast disguises herself as a boy to

protect her virtue. Arriving in London, she’s

hired by William Shakespeare as an assis-

tant to his maidservant Kate, who instantly

falls in love with the exotic cross-dressing

newcomer. This absurdity, familiar to fans of

Twelfth Night, is the opening move in Ben

Elton’s exquisite Shakespearean remix, The

Upstart Crow.

It’s 1604 and the Bard is in poor crea-

tive form. ‘I have banged out a few clun-

kers of late,’ he admits, referring to Measure

for Measure and All’s Well That Ends Well.

‘Should have been All’s Well That Ends

Crap,’ suggests a lackey. Enter a Puritan

who denounces drama as an ungodly art

while slapping himself across the face to

purge his soul of sinful thoughts. This gives

Shakespeare an idea. He will ‘Malvolio’

the Puritan and send him a fake love letter

purporting to come from Kate. Meanwhile

Kate’s affair with the disguised princess is

compounded by the arrival of the princess’s

twin brother, also shipwrecked on the Eng-

lish coast, who has dressed himself as a girl.

The elevated silliness of Elton’s many-

layered plot is superbly handled. He steals

key elements from classic plays and welds

them on to the known facts of Shake-

speare’s life. His two daughters, Susanna and

Judith, arrive from Stratford and are forced

to pledge their affection for their father in

order to secure a portion of his estate. Maid-

servant Kate plays the role of Cordelia in this

affectionate King Lear spoof. Elton is clearly

a formidable Shakespearean scholar and he

delights in satirising Jacobean English which

was more thickly laden with Anglo-Saxon

than the language we use today. ‘Tufting-muf-

flers,’ and ‘cockling-pouches’ are his coinag-

es for human genitalia. He calls homosexuals

‘gaysome hugger-tuggers’. The dreaded Puri-

tans, who want to close every theatre in the

land, are ‘God-prodding pure-titties’. ‘Fut-

tocking’ is an all-purpose intensifier which

sounds both obscene and harmless.

The show is enlivened by Steve Speirs

who plays Richard Burbage as a fruity, preen-

ing thesp, like Charles Laughton in the bath.

Every syllable drips with oil and suds. Dan-

survived two separate interruptions by a

mobile phone, prompting Rizzi to stop con-

ducting and plead for silence. The round of

applause that followed suggested that he’d

already got the audience wholly on side.

ing that, whenever she turned away from

a conversation with the family, her smil-

ing expression was instantly replaced with

one of Machiavellian scheming. Nor did

she seem any keener than Viv’s children on

their mother starting a new life with a new

man in a new home.

We knew from the beginning that mat-

ters wouldn’t end well — although not how

or why. In the opening sequence, police

lights flashed away in the darkness as

somebody was stretchered into an ambu-

lance. But instead of telling us who it was,

the programme then concentrated on the

back stories of all concerned, interspersed

with scenes of Mary and the siblings lying

through their teeth to a poker-faced detec-

tive about how happy the family had been

before the unspecified ‘incident’. For his

part, the detective assiduously avoided so

much as a pronoun when referring to ‘the

victim’.

ITV obviously thought highly of Flesh

and Blood — hence the decision to broad-

cast it over four consecutive nights: an

always-risky strategy that both presuppos-

es and demands a serious degree of viewer

commitment. For most of the programme,

too, you could see why. Those back stories

were intriguingly peeled away in a series of

short but unhurried scenes that between

them provided a pretty thorough explora-

tion of the human capacity for self-decep-

tion. There was also a strong but unforced

sense of how sibling bonds can be claustro-

phobic and reassuring at the same time.

In fact, the longer the drama went on,

the more its heart seemed to be in the fam-

ily relationships rather than the thriller ele-

ment. Because of the timing, I won’t spoil

the ending, but I think I can say that the

programme did a fairly good job of spoiling

it for itself. Eventually, give or take the odd

loose end, we did get a satisfactory answer

to the whodunnit — which in this case, of

course, included who they dun it to. But

then in the very last second came another

twist which suggested either that Flesh and

Blood had the sort of compulsive need to

pile up endless reversals (a kind of twist-

Tourette’s) so common in psychological

thrillers, or that it was suddenly on the hunt

for a second series — which always feels

a bit of a swizz when you’ve been watching

something for hours in the entirely justified

expectation of a complete resolution.

I’ve sometimes wondered about launch-

ing a campaign for TV programmes that

leave us hanging like this to be forced to let

us know in advance. (‘Warning: this series

contains swearing, scenes of violence and

a disappointingly inconclusive ending.’)

Admittedly, if Flesh and Blood had done

that, I might have missed out on a well-

above-par piece of TV drama, but it was

also one that ultimately came across like

a sharp and thoughtful family saga with

a thriller somewhat uneasily attached.

TV programmes should be forced to

let us know in advance if they have a

disappointingly inconclusive ending

The elevated silliness of Elton’s

many-layered plot is superbly

handled. This is comedy gold

ciwf.org.uk/BanLiveExports

Dear Prime Minister,

As you are aware, thousands of sheep and young, unweaned calves are exported

on long and gruelling journeys from the UK each year, only to be slaughtered on

arrival overseas or to be fattened and then slaughtered.

You have repeatedly said that, after leaving the EU, we “can ban cruel live

exports”. This is a policy that is long overdue, and one that our nation of animal

lovers has been urging for decades.

In your election manifesto, and more recently in the Queen’s Speech, you

declared your intention to “end excessively long journeys for slaughter and

fattening”. This simply doesn’t go far enough. By only restricting journey time,

there is a great risk of your policy being undermined, potentially allowing live

animal exports to continue to take place from British ports.

This would not deliver your promise to abolish the cruel live shipment of

animals. And it certainly would not represent – as you’ve been highlighting –

a tangible benefit of Brexit.

We, alongside Compassion in World Farming, urge the Government to

introduce a comprehensive live export ban.

It is time to end, once and for all, this unjustified and horrific trade that is a stain

on Britain’s reputation as a beacon of animal welfare – please.

Yours sincerely and in hope for animals,

Joanna Lumley OBE

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall

Evanna Lynch

Virginia McKenna OBE

Sue Jameson

Lesley Nicol

Mike Beckingham

Marc Abraham BVM&S MRCVS

James Greenwood BVSc MRCVS

Liz Earle MBE

Professor Dave Goulson

Professor Joy Carter CBE

Professor Toby Knowles

Fazlun Khalid

Deborah Meaden

Peter Egan

Alan Titchmarsh MBE

Will Travers OBE

James Bolam MBE

Carol Royle

Victoria Summer

Emma Milne BVSc MRCVS

Jonathon Porritt CBE

Zanna Van Dijk

Professor Andrew Knight

Professor David Clough

Professor Mark Eisler

Marina Lewycka

© 2020 Compassion in World Farming International - Registered Charity (England and Wales) No. 1095050

Registered Oce: Compassion in World Farming, River Court, Mill Lane, Godalming, Surrey GU7 1EZ, United Kingdom

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