I've never really got Abigail's Party. I laughed at the jokes, and got what it was on about, but what I didn't get was its significance. Certainly, I never really grasped why it was on my A-level course in English Literature.
So you'll have to forgive me if I don't get overly excited with the prospect of what is, in everything but name and director's protestations, a remake for the naughties. Maybe The Dinner Party (BBC1, 9pm) will actually prove, in time, to be a snapshot of life in the early part of the 21st century.
But maybe it won't. And while I'll probably watch it tonight, I am a bit concerned that the baggage it is now carrying as some seminal piece of art in waiting will leave a lot of viewers disappointed.
As a piece of Satire at the upwardly mobile, it should work very well. It certainly has the cast for it.
Set in the supposed green-belt paradise of suburban England, this comedy drama follows three couples who meet to celebrate Roger's birthday.
Taking place over one evening, it captures a sense of an English dinner party. Roger sits on his throne, surrounded by the finest marble and oak fittings, and holds court, telling the assembled gathering that his son is off to Oxford University.
Roger, a Barnardo's boy, has earned every brick of his house, every strip of wall paper – no silver spoon for Roger. His relative fortune has come from his hard graft in mergers and acquisitions. His wife, The Shrew, fell for Roger's charm, but, over the last 20 years, that love is wearing thin. She has grown tired of telling him how well he's done, and he struggles to understand why he doesn't receive the admiration he feels he deserves from her. Has he not given her everything she's ever asked for?
Jim and Juliet are their long-time "village" friends and regular badminton partners. Jim is a struggling photocopier salesman who feels his life is unravelling. He hasn't sold anything for months, his wife is spending way beyond their means and their 15-year-old daughter, Lucy, is pregnant and locked in her bedroom. Jim is desperate to "sell" to Roger. Roger knows this and a desperate salesman never sells.
Leo and Jackie, fed up with the grime, crime and the lack of parking, have moved out of London, hoping to find their idyll and let the kids grow up in the green and pleasant land of their imagination. They soon discover the order and hierarchy of "village life" isn't quite what it seems. By the time the Polish staff have served the main course, fractures are beginning to appear in their dream and the dinner party unravels into a tragedy of manners.
Rupert Graves plays Roger, Elizabeth Berrington plays The Shrew, Alun Armstrong plays Jim, Alison Steadman plays Juliet, Laura Greenwood plays Lucy, Lee Evans plays Leo and Jessie Wallace plays Jackie. The cast also includes George Cole as George and Jamie Campbell Bower as Douglas.
As I said, it has the makings to be funny ... but what I am more excited about is Britain's Favourite View: The Live Final (ITV 1, 8pm).
If you've missed the run up to this, various celebrities have pitched various views as Britain's best. Jamie Redknapp is championing the Pier Head. Good for him.
I assume the view he's showing tonight is from the Wirral side, with the diggers out of view. Fun all the same, though.
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