Peter Moffat gave us 'Criminal Justice' (good) and 'Silk' (formulaic soap set in well-trodden ground of legal chambers) so our approach to this was neutral. Episode one of six - or possibly forty-two, if successful - introduces Bert now, as a very old man, reminiscing about his life in a Derbyshire village. In 1914 he's a boy of twelve with a violent alcoholic father (John Simm) and a downtrodden mother (Maxine Peake), an older brother about to go to war and his first crush on a suffragist rector's daughter who's just arrived in the village.
'Downton Abbey' it's not, to dispel any notions of 'BBC's answer to...', but it's also not shaping up to be a British version of the German classic, 'Heimat'. Life in the village is grim for young Bert. When not getting bullied at home he's getting literally rapped over the knuckles at school, for being left-handed. His older brother Joe fares little better in his job at the Big House, where he has every class-difference stereotype hurled at his amiable head. Moffat seems to suffer from the same inability to write convincing upper-class characters as afflicts Mike Leigh. There is a dinner-table discussion of women's rights that is reminiscent of Poliakoff at his recent worst. Martha, the new arrival in the village, seems to be everything to everyone, and Bert spies on her in a village bath house which provides a handy gossiping ground for the women. (Were they only allowed an hour in it per week? Otherwise, their convergence must be due to female intuition.)
The village goes to war at the end of the episode, so let's hope it continues to not be the BBC's answer to 'Downton Abbey' in war cliches, at least....
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