I’m glad Sherwood comes with a warning for viewers… it’s a grimly bewildering drama full of monstrous cliches
TIME to adopt brace positions, working-class people.
Television’s liberal establishment has announced you need “help” and the band-wagon is clearly up and running because professional applause-chaser Carol Vorderman has already bellowed a few meaningless phrases on your behalf, at the Edinburgh Festival.
First out of the traps, at the same event, though, was Sherwood writer James Graham, who thinks the workers are “everyone’s least favourite diversity”, because of under-representation in the industry and the fact right-on TV folk are “squeamish” about class.
An optimistic view, as I don’t think they are squeamish at all.
At best, television and its dramatists seem to pity the white working-class, who James is really referring to here, but, at worst, they hate every single thing about them, from the causes they vote for and the newspapers they read to the clothes they wear and the way they speak.
Queen Mum’s are Lucky for you, though, there was a chance to make up your own mind, this week with the return of Sherwood, which received the sort of adoring welcome BBC1 normally restricts to Olympic gold medallists and Kamala Harris.
A reaction that baffled me as I could remember only two details about the first series: It was a drama about the bitter divisions caused by the 1984-85 miners’ strike in Nottinghamshire, where Graham failed to mention the lack of an NUM ballot that caused so much of the hatred.
And it was filled with locals who referred to the area’s most successful football team as “Notts Forest”, which, as etiquette breaches go, is right up there with pinching the old Queen Mum’s a**e at Trooping the Colour.
Of the rest? Great acting aside, I can remember not a single line or scene or even the string quartet who are trying to give us the heebie-jeebies with the background music, this time round.
There’s been a definite shift in the plot and left-wing axe-grinding, though.
In the first series they were all unhappy about the Tories closing the mines.
In this second series they’re all unhappy about the Tories trying to reopen the mines.
They’re just unhappy generally, in fact, and that’s part of the reason Sherwood is such hard work.
The other is that James Graham has tried to cut and paste together real-life stories about notorious Nottingham gangster Colin Gunn and an obscure Eighties Tory fixer called David Hart alongside the mythology of Robin Hood, resulting in a drama that’s as grimly bewildering as it is bewilderingly grim.
I might just have been able to unpick it, though, if the production hadn’t also added an entire layer of wokery to Sherwood, which means the saintly Sheriff of Nottingham is constantly reminding us she’s a lesbian, and a black couple have to stop the show in its tracks to explain why their “son” is white.
At a stroke this destroys the show’s credibility and its local identity, because you know it’s London calling the shots here not Nottingham, which is why Sherwood over-compensates and gets everyone to punctuate their sentences with a “duck”.
“Guess where I am? Fookin’ Wembley, duck.”
“Fookin’ ’ell, you’re hoity-toity, duck.” “Do whatever floats your boat, duck.”
The ducks would carry a bit more weight, of course, if the drama featured more genuine Nottingham accents and better drawn characters.
But beyond David Morrissey’s decent performance as Ian St Clair, Sherwood has no role for white working-class men beyond mindless, gun-toting thugs.
The BBC almost certainly thinks it’s Capitalism, Thatcher, Blair, Brexit, scab labour, Robert Lindsay’s hammy version of David Hart, or some other political bogeyman that’s robbed them of their identity, dignity and character, but it’s not.
It’s television’s narrow political and social prejudices that have created these monstrous clichés.
So I’m glad every episode of Sherwood comes with a warning for viewers, but it’s not the one you should be reading.
If James Graham is the saviour of the working-class, then God help them when their enemies turn up, duck.
I dig the Ender Debbie
WE pause now to remember Walford’s latest corpse, Debbie Colwell, who may well have been my favourite EastEnders character of all time.
True, she first appeared as recently as May 9, 2023, as part of husband Reiss’s back story.
Her cameos were also fitful and enigmatic, to say the least, as she always wore an expression that hovered somewhere between blank incomprehension and a knowing smirk.
And yes, I hear what the cynics are saying.
Right up until the moment Reiss smothered her to death with a pillow, when the nurses weren’t looking, she was also in a permanent vegetative state and incapable of either movement or speech.
But if it’s a straight choice between her, one of the regular harridans, or Sonia updating us about her internal organs with the news that: “The drugs have stimulated my ovary production efficiency and the doctors are really happy with my follicle growth.”?
Then I’ll take Debbie the vegetable every time.
May she rest in peat.
Name games
HAVING pointed out the Olympics was full of eye-catching names like Li Shiting, in a Chinese kayak, it seems only fair that, in the name of diversity, equity and inclusion, I point out that, according to Wikipedia, C4’s Paralympics boasts a Malaysian long-jumper who sounds like he’s been locked out of his Toyota Prius, Wong Kar Gee, a Thai table tennis star called Chalermpong Punpoo and the star of the blind Brazilian football team, Matheus Bum.
Great TV lies and delusions of the week
Celebrity MasterChef, Emma Thynn on cooking a duck breast: “It’s like being a soldier, isn’t it.”
No.
Celebrity Help! My House Is Haunted, narrator Ian Shaw: “It’s been another fascinating investigation that’s given some wonderful evidence.”
And Dating Naked, Rico: “I think Lauren’s got a wicked smile, lovely eyes, I think she’s insane.”
Although I’ll concede the last point, in fairness
Keep up the K-Pop
IN the latest episode of BBC1’s documentary series Made In Korea: The K-Pop Experience, new vocal coach Jin Young-Jang joined forces with choreographers Seung Hyun Yu and Do Yun Wun to polish the boyband before a performance for Hee Jun Yoon.
With only one problem now remaining.
Kun Fuh-Kin Sing.
Ferry’s fright
CELEBRITY Help! My House Is Haunted: Geordie Shore special.
Barri Ghai: “We are starting our investigation in the master bedroom of Chloe Ferry, where Ian felt a gruesome presence.”
Well he would, wouldn’t he.
Unexpected morons in bagging area
THE Finish Line, Roman Kemp: “Sedgefield was the constituency of which Labour Prime Minister?”
Debs: “Margaret Thatcher.”
The Weakest Link, Romesh Ranganathan: “In British politics, Holyrood is the parliament of which UK country?”
Russell Watson: “Pakistan.”
Mastermind, Clive Myrie: “The horror film villain Freddy Krueger, who attacks his victims in their dreams, first appeared in what 1984 film?”
Joseph: “Kramer Versus Kramer.”
And Clive Myrie: “A line of broken thread in a pair of tights or stockings is commonly named after what large household equipment used to access high places?”
Chris: “A broom.”
Random TV irritations
FOOTBALL Focus eccentric Mark “Clem” Clemmit invading people’s personal space and generally putting them on edge.
Dating Naked host Rylan Clark genuinely boasting to This Morning that, “we filmed in February and some couples are still together”.
(Wow! What’s their secret?)
And BBC1’s Tuesday lunchtime news, which rounded off a report about the eight stabbings, 334 arrests and 50 injured police officers, at the Notting Hill carnival, by describing it as “a huge and otherwise well-enjoyed event”, because it thinks we’re very, very stupid and as cowardly as they are.
TV gold
LESLEY Manville, Monica Dolan and Bethany Asher, as Julie, Ann and Stephie, rising brilliantly above the limitations of Sherwood, on BBC1.
Freddie Flintoff taking his Preston lads to buy suits, at an Indian tailors, on Field Of Dreams.
Romesh Ranganathan proving to be the ideal host and man to deliver put-downs like “Who thinks Idris Elba is in the middle of your Idris Arma,” on The Weakest Link.
And Sky Documentaries’ utterly barmy three-parter The Body Next Door, which probably could’ve done with a bit of editing, but contained the single best line of the year: “She loved men. Three days before she died, she tried to snog the oncologist at the hospice when he went to adjust her syringe driver.”
Great sporting insights
CLINTON Morrison: “It’s not an excuse but in the end it is.”
Mel Jones: “The umpire was unmoved but raised his finger.”
And JJ Chalmers: “It’s going to take something finer than a fine margin.”
(Compiled by Graham Wray)
Lookalike of the week
THIS week’s winner is Rob Beckett and Chum Chum from Fanboy & Chum Chum, whatever the hell that is.
Emailed in by Bailey James.