A lifetime of passion and pain

Marguerite McGrath reviews this week’s television.

Finding out about an affair your mother had when you’re young couldn’t be easy, especially if your mother had always seemed the most ordinary of people to you for your whole life. Yet, for Kate Mellor, this was a reality.
Washing the dishes with her mother one day and complaining about her husband, Kate’s mother told her that when she was 30 years younger she had had an affair with a Polish fairground worker and that she had loved him with every breath in her body.
Having never told anyone before, she quickly grew emotional and the normally stoic and private woman broke down before her eyes. Drawing on this experience and the further sight of watching how upset her mother was at her younger brother’s wedding, Mellor constructed and wrote a play very loosely based on her mother’s story.
The themes of the play are love, grief and passion and it was very successful internationally. It had a successful run in the West End and, although the film rights were hot property, Mellor kept them until she felt the time was right. And so it came to be on the BBC this year. Mellor had remarked that she didn’t want her mother played by Cher, so Billie Piper and Sue Johnson must have been acceptable alternatives.
A Passionate Woman is the two-part BBC drama based on the play. Set in Yorkshire, it tells the story of a 1950s housewife who has a passionate affair with a handsome Polish man played by Theo James. She falls completely in love with him and their affair is cut short when the man’s jealous wife shoots him at work in the fairground.
The 1950s storylines are beautifully shot and acted. You feel for this young mother – alone all day with only her son for company; her days spent in a cold flat cooking and cleaning.
She has lost her love for life until this handsome man, Craze, who lives down stairs ignites a passion and sexual awakening in her. She is torn between her loyalty to her husband who she doesn’t love, her child and the passion she feel for her lover and the romantic life he paints for them.
Billie Piper – who seems to be the hardest working actress in Britain at the moment – beautifully captures the essence of this woman trapped by circumstance.
Piper shines portraying a woman who is, at times, naïve and weak. She doesn’t stand up to her husband or indeed her lover.
In one scene, Crase is clearly emotionally manipulating her but she fails to see it as she is blinded by lust and passion. She only sees him as a kind, loving and passionate man.
She ignores his temper, the fact that he has a wife and gambling debts all around town. However, when he is killed she cannot grieve and instead carries guilt and her love for him around with her for 30 years. She puts all her love for him into her son and does everything for him.
Completely dependent on the son for happiness in her life, she goes into a depression and has a mirror breakdown once she learns that he is going to get married and move to Australia.
The second half of the programme deals with this. Set in 1980s Britain during the coal strikes. Betty is played by Sue Johnson. Now, I enjoyed this series very much but I have to admit I struggled with it.
Betty is not just a passionate woman but a selfish and silly one too. Although this behaviour was brought on by her breakdown, the way she acts towards her son on his wedding day and leading up to it was almost unbearable.  I realise that this is what the programme was trying to do.
It was trying to show us how far she had gone. How crazy she had been driven by the passionless life she had led and her pining for happier times. But I have to admit, there were times that I was shouting at the television for her to snap put of it.
The programme was well made and very enjoyable. It had all the emotions that one expects in a good drama but I felt there were some holes in the ending. Once the breakdown was overcome, the wedding went on as normal.
Her husband came through for her and she realised that she had seen her lover through rose-tinted glasses and that her husband truly loved her. However, a ride in the hot air balloon seemed to take place too early in the day for it to be at the end of the ceremony and also it was supposed to have arrived before they had even had dinner.
I can’t imagine that anyone could have gone through the whole day at a wedding without having their salmon or beef, nor would the celebrations have been over while the sun was still relatively high in the sky. It seemed a bit rushed and tacked on and didn’t make much sense time-wise. All in all a good drama.
There are a number of celebrity game shows on the television at the moment. The newest one that I have watched, although it is the second series, is You’ve Been Watching on Channel 4.
This British comedy game show is hosted by Charlie Brooker and features a panel of well-known celebrities. Its title is a reference to sitcoms written by David Croft whose credits all began with the title, “you’ve been watching”.
The idea behind the show is that the panellists have been asked to view a number of shows during the week and then join him for some questions and comedy dialogue.
To be honest, it is all fairly harmless stuff. However, I am just wondering when are we going to have ordinary people on the television again. I am knocking the panel format.
I usually enjoy it and as I have to pay a television licence fee for the Irish channels, I would rather watch someone who is paid to be funny that someone who just thinks they are. But I do feel we might have too many of these shows on at the moment. Is it time to scale back?