The Stage

TV review

Published Tuesday 2 March 2010 at 11:00 by Harry Venning

Romantic comedy drama has always been a precarious juggling trick to pull off, especially in the shadow of the Cold Feet’s unassailable reputation. So all credit to writer Peter Souter for even attempting the feat with Married, Single, Other.

An ensemble piece, the show uses three contrasting pairs to explore various aspects of heterosexual, thirty-something, white, Anglo-Saxon coupledom. There is one black character, but so far she has had to conduct her relationship off-camera.

First up are Lillie (Lucy Davis) and Eddie (Shaun Dooley), partners and parents for 16 years, but yet to commit to marriage. Then we meet Babs (Amanda Abbington) and Dickie (Dean Lennox Kelly), practitioners of wildly satisfying sex, but emotionally incompatible and financially insoluble. Finally there’s bed-hopping playboy Clint (Ralph Little) cherishing an uncharacteristic devotion to Abbey (Miranda Raison), a beautiful model who is tired of the attentions of shallow men.

So far, so formulaic, but Married, Single, Other really does strain to impress with dialogue that is clever to the point of infuriating. All of the characters, including the teenage cast members, effortlessly exchange the kind of badinage that looks great on paper, but tests an actor’s abilities, and patience, to the limit. Davis and Dooley just about pull it off, everybody else struggles to convince.

Little has the hardest time. His casting as a smooth-talking, worldly-wise ad man/lothario is irretrievably undermined by the first shot he features in, with bare chested Clint seen sitting in his bed beneath a giant soft-porn nude photo that would offend the sexual sophistication of a 12-year-old boy. Quite how everybody involved failed to realise that this visual shorthand screamed ‘I am emotionally and sexually retarded’ is beyond me.

Clint, the show labours to assure us, is flawed, but likeable and this is largely how I feel about Married, Single, Other. There’s not enough comedy and too much schmaltz, but episode one did contain several surprises and one genuine shock, with the characters sufficiently engaging to merit sticking with a little longer. Which isn’t the advice I’d give to Abbey regarding Clint.

On Expenses, BBC4’s latest drama based upon real events, concerned “the defining political scandal of the age”, MPs’ expenses.

“Some scenes have been imagined, some dates have been compressed,” apologised On Expenses’ introductory captions, “but mostly, you couldn’t make it up.”

Having established this reassuringly flippant tone, On Expenses used humour and irreverence to recount American journalist Heather Brooke’s fight for disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act. Brooke’s five years of research was ultimately scooped by The Daily Telegraph and its chequebook.

Anna Maxwell Martin starred as the belligerent, obsessive and frequently disagreeable Brooke, with Brian Cox delivering a superb performance as her antagonist Michael Martin, Speaker of the House of Commons, whose blusteringly robust defence of MPs’ personal privacy ultimately served to precipitate the crisis.

Let’s Dance for Sport Relief may be for a very worthy cause, but as entertainment it really is a bit ropey. I managed to hang in there until representatives of darts and snooker performed Run DMC’s Walk This Way. I shall buy some Sports Relief socks instead.

PROGRAMMES

Married, Single, Other - ITV1, Monday, February 22, 9pm

On Expenses - BBC4, Wednesday, February 24, 10pm

Lets Dance For Sports Relief - BBC1, Saturday, February 20, 6.30pm