Jekyll & Hyde, ITV's new Sunday teatime drama, is lots of fun. Written by Charlie Higson, most famous for The Fast Show, but also the writer of several gruesome thrillers for grown ups (King of the Ants), and kids (the Young Bond books), it's very pointedly not an adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, but a new spin-off, following the life of his grandson, Robert Jekyll.
It's almost like a Alan Moore graphic novel re-imagining of the story, set in the 1930s with Robert trying to find out about his past, and battling his urges to change from his normal, mild-mannered self to the demonic Hyde. It also brings to mind 'The Incredible Hulk', with the first transformation coming about when he needs to lift a truck off a small child. (Thankfully he doesn't inflate and his clothes stay on). Higson has also thrown a bit of medicine in there, with Jekyll needing to keep taking his pills to keep the attacks at bay. It's not really much of a spoiler to say that he loses the pills pretty early on.
It's very entertaining, with some great performances particularly from Tom Bateman as Jekyll, and Richard E Grant hamming it up as the baddie Sir Roger Bulstrode, head of a murky organisation investigating the paranormal in 1930s London (we said it was a bit Alan Moore). It has been criticised for being too scary for the 6.30pm slot, and maybe it is - the bit where intruders enter Jekyll's parents' house was genuinely unsettling - but we remember being terrified by Doctor Who when we were, ahem, somewhat smaller, and he is currently on show pre-watershed on BBC1.
Some bits don't work. The very brief explanation of Jekyll's ancestry: Stevenson's Hyde had an illegitimate son, who met Jekyll's adopted father in the First World War, having fathered a child himself, which he then abandoned) is a bit convoluted and doesn't explain why Jekyll is called Jekyll, but let's not think about that too much.
Another drama that pretty much eschewed younger actors and characters (see earlier) was Steve Pemberton's adaptation of EF Benson's Mapp & Lucia.
Previously adapted in the 1980s with Prunella Scales, Geraldine McEwan & Nigel Hawthorne (which neither of us saw), the new version had Miranda Richardson, Anna Chancellor, and Pemberton as Mapp, Lucia, and Lucia's friend Georgie Pillson.
Lucia and Georgie move to Tilling to spend the summer, Lucia renting a property from Mapp. An undeclared war then breaks out between the Mapp & Lucia over social influence in the community, with each resorting to dirty tricks to get one up on the other.
In the age of Instagram and Facebook and the sort of social boasting that those two offer it feels very relevant, even through it's 1920s & 30s.
The other great thing was that it gave meaty roles to a whole host of great actors, like Felicity Montagu, Poppy Miller, Paul Ritter, and Gemma Whelan.
Most credit must go to long-term EF Benson fan Steve Pemberton both for the idea to adapt the stories again, and for coming up with such a brilliant script. It almost makes you wish that the powers that be give over a special part of the commissioning budget to former members of The League of Gentlemen, given the quality of work that has come from Pemberton, Mark Gatiss (though we remain skeptical of 'Sherlock)', Reece Shearsmith and Jeremy Dyson, and also seek out similarly talented bands of writer-performers to conceive new shows.
We only got 3 episodes, but given the wealth of material in the original six books, and the flexibility of the concept, we hope that there will be many more to come (there were 10 episodes in the 80s)
It sometimes seems that all films are made for teenagers - certainly the big box office ones are - but there's a growing counter-trend of producing stories for older audiences, as seen by releases such as The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, and also TV shows like Last Tango in Halifax, and now That Day We Sang.
Scheduled over Christmas, it was one of those dramas where people occasionally break into song and dance routines. We're not going to be uncharitable enough to say that that would never happen, and we enjoyed this rather tall tale of love among the 40 & 50-somethings. Set in both the 1930s and the 1960s, it followed the life of gifted singer Jimmy (later Tubby) Baker, as he sang in Manchester's Youth Choir, and their greatest achievement, 'That Day We Sang' at the Manchester Free Trade Hall.
Clearly realism wasn't at the top of Victoria Wood's priorities when she wrote it, but she got good performances and real chemistry out of the two leads Michael Ball as Tubby and Imelda Staunton as Enid (great to see a love story where the woman is older than the man too!). Harvey Chaisty, who played the young Jimmy was also very good, even if he doesn't bear much resemblance to Michael Ball (which might explain why Enid doesn't recognize him for almost the entire film...).
It seems to have been very well received on IMDB (8.3 rating at time of writing) and by the senior members of the family. It's probably easy for determined cynics to mock, but a successful production for post-Christmas Day viewing.
