Love And Marriage (2013)

[Mel O'Drama]

This came up as a suggestion in Prime. Understandable since I've been on a Victoria Wood jag and this stars both Duncan Preston and Celia Imrie.

Preston and Imrie play Alison Steadman's husband and sister respectively. And there are a number of other familiar faces: Corrie's John Stape is one of Steadman and Preston's sons. The gobby Scottish dressmaker from Ugly Betty is one of the daughters-in-law. Larry Lamb is Celia Imrie's married lover. And Dirty Den's mistress Jan is his wife.

Alison Steadman and Duncan Preston are terrific as Pauline and Ken, the couple whose long-term marriage is quietly collapsing due to distance and lack of communication. Both are completely believable. And both elicit empathy. It's one of those "no winners" situations in which both sides can be seen, which adds to the frustration because objectively it's easy to see what could be done, but instead we see Ken withdraw into himself.

Their children, too, are enjoyably frustrating. There's a degree of entitlement from them, but it's also coming from a place of fear. Eldest son Kevin, for example, repeatedly "borrows" money from Pauline which he doesn't pay back and is outraged when she cancels a cheque she's written him. But he's shown to be in financial difficulties partly due to living beyond his means, but also due to losing his job as a firefighter. And there's an element of low self esteem beneath it all, which is perhaps best expressed when he asks his wife what other job he could do.

Daughter Heather is first shown to be a harridan. She's by far the most unlikeable character, domineering the younger, prettier husband she's snared and feels she now owns, spying on him and getting insecure when his good looks attract occasional admiring glances from other women. She's currently driven by an obsession to have a child, having had difficulty conceiving and the viewer is left to wonder whether this explains her insecurities, or whether the desire to have a child is simply an attempt to deepen her entrapment of her partner and an attempt to fix her emptiness. She eventually has retaliatory sex with her dance partner believing her husband is cheating. But at the same time, her insecurities are evident enough that the viewer can at least begin to see her outlook.

There's also an angle of the family being seen from the outside. And it's the outsiders who frequently seem to highlight the family's shortcomings. Pauline's date with a teacher is a case in point. And then there's Ashley, Heather's dance partner who starts out blending into the background seen through Heather's eyes. But then the day after she's had sex with him he has this winning scene in which he tearfully professes his love for her while dressed up as the football team's mascot. John Heffernan's performance takes Ashley from a tertiary character to someone taking Heather's dysfunction at face value and becoming emotionally invested.

I was a bit worried at the "comedy-drama" categorisation, but the balance is mostly good. A couple of the broader moments of comedy haven't worked for me, but they've been few and far between. It's an interesting blend of performances that are frequently subtle and real with an overall tone that's a bit more upbeat and almost artificial with its jazzy soundtrack and fast pace.

I must confess it has been a little difficult to get past the surname "Paradise". Whenever it's mentioned it feels like an excuse to clobber the audience over the head with the "trouble in Paradise" tagline (even though nobody within the show has used that phrase).

Having watched two episodes, I'm already a third of the way through the entire series. Already, I'm enjoying it enough to wonder why on earth it was cancelled after just six episodes.

 

[Mel O'Drama]

Oh, and here's a contemporary article on the series: The Americans, Love & Marriage and the rise of hybrid TV genres

At first glance I thought it was going to be about the comedy-drama genre, but turns out its felt that Love And Marriage belongs to a newer breed still.

[T]he series, in its first part, combines mock-doc (the characters are interviewed directly to camera) with whimsical fam-dram (bored wife with boring husband and doddery dad) before a moment of tragedy introduces a darker storyline. Publicists and previewers have generally gone for the increasingly fashionable tag "comedy-drama", but that ignores the oddity of the so-far unexplained documentary element. Will the characters later be revealed to be taking part in a TV show, or is the device merely an attempt to get round the recurrent episode-one problem of introducing the characters?

 

[Mel O'Drama]

Gosh - I really didn't think I needed to see Graeme Hawley and James McArdle manspreading on a bench while wearing the teeniest of Borat mankinis.

I wonder what else I've been wrong about.

 

[Mel O'Drama]

And as quickly as that... it's over.

On paper, the series is filled with soap cliches. In the course of just six episodes there has been the breakdown of a marriage; there have been infidelities on various different levels (one, naturally, resulting in pregnancy from a one night stand); financial difficulties leading to drastic action leading to arrest; two mother/daughter reunions; and ultimata galore.

But the writing, presentation and performances are of such quality that it feels new and accessible. It is essentially soap opera, but it's classy soap. It's Corrie meets Scenes From A Marriage* with a touch of the Alan Bennetts.

*The focus on four marriages, with each experiencing its own turmoils and temptations as the episodes progress has put me in mind a little of early Knots Landing. I suppose with them being two generations of one family rather than neighbours the relationships are more akin to Dallas, but the family interactions remind me even more of the Beale/Fowler clans in EastEnders.

With a running time of just four and a half hours in its first (and, as it turned out, only) year there's little room for chaff. As I said before, some of the humour is a little broad but I do feel it's balanced out by some of its darker tones.

There's also a special feeling that this series captures. The "married person having an affair" scenario is so heavily used in almost every TV genre that it's become a hackneyed trope. The viewer boos for one side, hisses the other and places bets on which way it will go. There's very little feeling and it's frequently all about the physical betrayal. Love And Marriage sets its scenes well by giving us the music between the lyrics. We spend time with the characters, and we come to see the little moments where a partner feels neglected or taken for granted in some way. Or we forget that entirely and see someone having a crisis about their own choices or their relationship with themselves. The affairs (or near affairs. Or suspected affairs) are treated as a symptom of the problem and not as the problem itself. Which means that placing bets on the outcome is immaterial because by then the rules have changed.

The Charlie/Heather/Ashley business encapsulates this perfectly. I started out saying how unpleasant Heather was right at the start. Her actions as the series went on were even more unpleasant, but the whole storyline was underscored with such sadness. She wasn't a bitch. Charlie wasn't a victim. Ashley wasn't a smooth Casanova. They were just three people whose stories overlapped. There were times when all made the wrong choices, but I could also understand those choices in the moment. Things coming out into the open at series' end wasn't about the high drama and the revelations so much as it was about each of them quietly trying to work out how to live with the consequences.

Working the humour into those moments was hit and miss. Kevin's wild Spanish accent when ringing Charlie live on air to drop a hint about Heather's infidelity was a definite hit with me (especially the way his accent kept changing to the point that Sarah pointed out he'd slipped into a Welsh accent). And I love that his casual jesting with a Spanish accent was what made the penny drop with Charlie. However, I could have done without the silly chase to Strauss's William Tell Overture. But I can forgive the series that.

The dialogue is so good. Some of the lines have been delivered like arrows to the heart. Every single member of the ensemble has had a shining moment or two. It was the older generation that attracted me to the series (Alison Steadman/Duncan Preston/Celia Imrie) and they've all proved well worth their weight in gold. Duncan Preson in particular has really impressed me with what a gifted actor he is. Ken is a difficult role to play because everything is internalised, but he's been note-perfect the entire way.

I do wish there was more to watch. I'm invested, and it feels wrong that the series has ended in such an open-ended way having barely scratched the surface of its potential. But I'll have to console myself with the fact that it's a case of quality over quantity.