THE
CRITICSJAMES COWENTELEVISION
A comedy
that’s lost in
translation
Ten Percent Amazon
Imagine... Miriam
Margolyes: Up for Grabs
BBC1, Mon
Piers Morgan Uncensored
TalkTV
Navalny BBC2, Mon
Gaslit Starzplay
Why is today’s television
viewing experience so hectic
and repugnant? It is like trying
to order sushi for 15 vegans in
a gale. Every week I scrabble
around a thousand tiny apps:
Hulu, Starzplay, Discovery+.
Is it too much to ask for
television to die back to two
or three big streamers, so I
don’t have to review stuff only
five of you might see, like
Gaslit, or Ten Percent?
Ten Percent is Amazon’s
big new comedy, a scene-by-
scene remake of Netflix’s Call
My Agent!, the successful
French show about a talent
agency in Paris.
Only a few years ago the
idea of the British stealing
ideas for comedy from the
French would have seemed in
itself comic. The French can’t
do two things: humility, or
laughs. But Call My Agent!
changed that, mercilessly
ripping France’s pompous
film industry. It felt amazing
— every episode someone had
an expertly choreographed
Brigitte Bardot-style freakout.
Roll on the English version.
The remake features Jack
Davenport in one of the main
roles, as a Soho agent whose
father, also an agent, is played
by Jim Broadbent. The first
episode’s other storyline is
that Kelly Macdonald has
been offered a ridiculous role:
Birdwoman.
How can I put this? It’s not
very funny. It is the opposite
of funny. Davenport — a grey
suit — isn’t funny, nor is
(unbelievably) Broadbent,
and Lydia Leonard, a serious
actress, struggles to step into
the peerlessly beaky shoes of
Camille Cottin.
The third agent is played by
Prasanna Puwanarajah — fine
by me, except it just looks a
bit token when everything
else is an exact copy of the
French show (which is, er, not
diverse). And he’s not very
funny either. Why turn
something that’s extremely
French into something that’s
English? It is embarrassing,
like watching a frog version^
of Ab Fab.
The script is written by the
man who did W1A, which
means a lot of nibbling little
rejoinders in tense eyebally
meetings where secretaries
will cut people dead just by
saying “Yup” and “Oh, lovely”
until you feel you are
drowning in a blizzard of
corporate manners. In W1A
the dialogue is the plot, but
that isn’t what this show is
about. It’s about madness,
insecurity, working with the
barmiest people on earth.
Someone has clearly
thrown money at it: the big
names just keep on dropping.
Macdonald and (in the second
episode) Helena Bonham
Carter and Olivia Williams
— all actresses great at
sending themselves
up. So why don’t
they? All of them
seem normal and
friendly, like
watching boring
children’s publishers
on an away day.well as deliver one of the
show’s few actual jokes.
How I wish there had
been someone like Miriam
Margolyes in it, injecting pure
filth. Imagine... Miriam
Margolyes: Up for Grabs
began with the actress sitting,
like a doughy little child, on
her south London doorstep,
shouting, “Are you Jewish?”
at passersby.
I often find Margolyes’s
humour alarming — who is
this strange, dirty little girl
panting “Daddy”? Does she
have to be so sexual? But Alan
Yentob honoured her with
serious treatment, resulting
in a fascinating hour of TV.
We learnt, for example,
that she voiced the PG Tips
chimpanzees and the
Cadbury’s bunny. Relaxing one
day after filming Scorsese’s The
Age of Innocence she decided to
cheer everyone up by lifting
up her T-shirt and letting “her
la-las spring forth”, Richard E
Grant said. Footage showed
her endlessly ambushingpeople. It’s her way of showing
love: attacking people or
flashing her “front botty”.
She once asked Terry Wogan:
“Do you mind being fat?”
People underestimate the
importance of character in
television — it is its driving
force. Why waste time on a
muddled period drama when
you could have Margolyes
asking Yentob: “How old were
you when you had your first
f***?” “Probably 15,” he
stuttered. “I think that’s
rather disgraceful,” she said.
“Too early.”
On Monday another huge
personality plopped back in
the presenter’s chair: Piers
Morgan Uncensored arrived
on TalkTV. He began with
an exclusive interview with
Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago,
in which he sat opposite the
former president with
strangely red-rimmed eyes.
I had been worried this
stunning debut would be
simply a repeat of his last
interview with Trump, whenOnly one person brings
originality: Tim McInnerny is
superb, portraying an ageing,
out-of-work actor, struggling
with a prostate cancer
diagnosis. “The thing
about Chekhov is
that it’s genuinely
funny,” he says.
Few actors can
convey such pathos
with the tiniest slump
of the shoulders, asThe British Call My Agent! is jammed
with stars — but where are the jokes?
How I wish
Miriam
Margolyes
had been in
it — injecting
pure filth
French fancy The cast
of Ten PercentCAMILLA
LONG
14 1 May 2022