Press clippings Page 5
"Secrets in a marriage are like dry rot in a house," opines newly retired lollipop lady Pauline Paradise (Alison Steadman) to an off-screen interviewer. Her husband Ken (Duncan Preston), slumped beside her on the sofa in a near-permanent state of catatonic disengagement, concurs.
As do the rest of the extended Paradise family, their homes visited in turn by this shamelessly contrived but extremely convenient narrative device, which throws into stark relief the shared veneer of domestic contentment with the cauldron of deceit, disappointment and dissatisfaction bubbling beneath.
There is - you guessed it - trouble in the Paradises, and ITV's new comedy drama Love and Marriage will be here over the next six weeks to chronicle it.
There were an awful lot of Paradises to introduce, with an awful lot of back stories to establish, so episode one was rather obliged to sacrifice subtlety on the altar of exposition.
When characters weren't sharing information with the camera they were frequently to be found telling each other things they already knew - "You were a top model in the 1970s" - for the benefit of viewers at home. During the first 20 minutes, the top-rate cast waded heroically through a mud slide of explanatory dialogue, with the threat of submersion beneath a wave of audience impatience never more than a line away.
Shortly after the first ad break, however, they hit dry land. The storylines kicked in, the dialogue came alive - "She keeps saying my name as if she's never heard it before and doesn't like the sound of it" - and proceedings began to gather a satisfying pace.
The Paradise clan, we learnt, are beset by a multitude of problems - financial, emotional, domestic, professional, romantic, historic - which they look to matriarch Pauline to either solve or shoulder.
Following the accidental death of her father, the much-put-upon Pauline reassesses her life and rejects all the roles imposed upon her. To everyone's amazement, including her own, she ups sticks, moves in with her racy younger sister and starts telephoning potential new suitors at two o'clock in the morning.
Despite its remorselessly jaunty soundtrack, Love and Marriage explored some sombre themes and was all the more interesting for it. Steadman's performance drives the drama, but she has excellent support from a stellar cast that also includes Ashley Jensen, Larry Lamb and Celia Imrie.
If not quite hooked, I shall stick with the series, if only to find out why the Paradise family's quiz team didn't get a point for correctly identifying The Constant Gardener as Rachel Weisz's Oscar-winning vehicle.
Harry Venning, The Stage, 7th June 2013The peerless Alison Steadman walks the line between laughter and tears with aplomb, taking the lead as Pauline Paradise in this six-part comedy drama. Nearing the end of her road as a lollipop lady, Pauline is apprehensive about her looming retirement. But does anyone in her family care that her life is at a crossroads? Not a jot, it seems, with taciturn hubby Ken (Duncan Preston) being, well, taciturn, and her brood of offspring preoccupied with their own lives and rearing assorted infants. It's a Syndicate-style format, with the perspective shifting from one Paradise to another, week by week. The impressive supporting cast includes Celia Imrie, Larry Lamb, Ashley Jensen, Graeme Hawley and Zoe Telford.
Carol Carter and Larushka Ivan-Zadeh, Metro, 5th June 2013Celia Imrie interview
At 60, the defiantly singular Celia Imrie is anything but the 'also-ran' her mother once called her.
Daphne Lockyer, The Telegraph, 2nd June 2013Gavin & Stacey star Alison Steadman washes herself of eager-to-please Essex mum Pam to play a matriarch who's finally had enough of her family in Love and Marriage, ITV's latest star-packed drama.
When her husband fails to show support throughout her retirement and the death of her father, frustrated doormat Pauline Paradise (Steadman) breaks it to her adult kids - who include Ashley Jensen and Coronation Street star Graeme Hawley - that she's packing her bags and starting a new life. Also featuring Celia Imrie and Larry Lamb, Love and Marriage is at once funny and poignant, disheartening and upflifting. We'd say it's definitely worth a peek, even before the mini-Gavin & Stacey reunion.
Daniel Sperling, Digital Spy, 2nd June 2013It didn't take long for the first phone hacking comedy to make it to our screens. This hour-long swipe at the tabloid scandal, written by Guy Jenkin of Drop the Dead Donkey fame, is set at The Daily Comet, where staff land stories by any means necessary. Phone hacking, entrapment, blagging... the hacks here do it all. Press baron Stanhope Feast (Michael Kitchen, playing a gruff Antipodean magnate with a young Asian wife) demands some big exclusives from his flame-haired editor Kate Loy (Claire Foy). But her moral compass went awry some time ago and it's about to cause a major scandal. The salty script is peppered with political references, while a colourful cast includes Nigel Planer and Celia Imrie.
Michael Hogan, The Telegraph, 29th December 2011One of the first proper Christmas specials to be shown this year was The Bleak Old Shop Of Stuff - a television "reimagining" of writer Mark Evans's BBC Radio 4 comedy series Bleak Expectations. Despite being totally up my street, I've never properly caught this Dickensian spoof in its audio form, but with the likes of Stephen Fry and Robert Webb on board, I wasn't about to miss the TV version.
And I tell you want, it's a hell of lot weirder than I thought it would be. When Jedrington Secret-Past (Webb) closes up shop for the festive period, his little daughter gives him a Jam Spaniel (a tiny dog-shaped jam roly poly pudding...) as a Christmas present, and when he goes off to get ingredients for the Christmas feast, he's given a brace of "Tinsel-Tits".
Odd. But really good. This was silly stuff that was both broad and surreal and there were some brilliant cameos - especially from the wonderful Celia Imrie.
Anna Lowman, Dork Adore, 26th December 2011It was only a matter of time. A Charles Dickens comedy-adventure mash-up had to happen, and what better timing than now, in the warm-up to our annual pre-prandial sit-down to A Christmas Carol? I'm only surprised that zombies didn't feature. As it turned out, zombies weren't required. The first of the four-part series, The Bleak Old Shop of Stuff, wove together characters and plotlines from Bleak House, Great Expectations and The Old Curiosity Shop, along with a star cast and a sparkling script to make for an entertaining spoof.
If the names of the characters sounded a little contrived at first, a sharp script and perfect casting quickly allayed fears. Robert Webb played the hapless Pip-inspired adult orphan, Jedrington Secret-Past, searching for just that; Katherine Parkinson charmed in her role as his wife-turned-"treacle junkie"; Johnny Vegas turned up as a noble street urchin and Celia Imrie's variation on Miss Havisham (Miss Christmasham) was a winning one. Even Stephen Fry managed to play not yet another version of himself as the baddie, complete with protracted evil laugh. He played the lawyer who repossessed Jedrington's shop and threw his wife and children into a debtors' prison, setting off a plot of Dickensian twists and turns in which novels converged, coincidences occurred and long-lost mothers, lovers and children re-united.
The script, written by Mark Evans, who has previously penned a Radio 4 "comedy", Bleak Expectations, had that rare double-edged agility to appeal across generations. It was both cute and clever, so youngsters got an action-filled plot with Jedrington's children delivering some corking lines, while adults got Dickensian cross-references and literary satire. The wordplay and visual jokes must have tickled both. As we brace ourselves for a fair share of anodyne viewing over the festive period, this breathes life back into the family entertainment genre by actually doing what it says on the tin. Let's hope it maintains its momentum for another three episodes.
Arifa Akbar, The Independent, 20th December 2011Fans of BBC Radio 4's cult Dickensian spoof Bleak Expectations will be delightified at the news that Mark Evans has penned a Christmas special for TV.
The Bleak Old Shop Of Stuff - the first of a four-parter - is a brand new story but a very familiar one that's stuffed with those essential Dickensian staples - flinty-hearted lawyers, grubby-faced urchins bursting into song, cobwebby spinsters, suggestive surnames and the spectre of debtor's prison, known here as The Skint.
Robert Webb stars as the kindly Jedrington Secret-Past - owner of The Old Shop Of Stuff. But his hopes for a happy Christmas with his loving family are shattered by the arrival of evil lawyer Malifax Skulkingworm (Stephen Fry), a sinful man in an unusual hat demanding an unpaid debt that will be his ruin.
The cast includes David Mitchell as an exceedingly jolly man, Johnny Vegas (already a veteran of the BBC's adaptation of Bleak House), Katherine Parkinson, Celia Imrie and Pauline McLynn - as well as a small but pivotal role in every sense for young Jude Wright from Sky's recent sitcom Spy.
TV provides the opportunity for the kind of visual sight gags and special effects that radio doesn't and they've really gone to town creating a virtual Victorian London.
Purists might argue that it's funnier on the radio when your imagination is left to supply the pictures, but this still serves up a splendidly silly start to the Christmas week.
Jane Simon, The Mirror, 19th December 2011It's never too early to start feeling festive, right? The Bleak Old Shop of Stuff might be airing midway through December, but it's the perfect show to get you in the mood. From the writer who pens the popular Radio 4 series Bleak Expectations, this Dickensian spoof focuses on a shopkeeper - played by Robert Webb. Actually, the cast is perfect: Stephen Fry, David Mitchell, Katherine Parkinson and Celia Imrie are among the stars taking part. Both silly and a period drama - should be fun winter viewing.
Digital Spy, 7th December 2011The new Friday morning comedy on Radio 4, Polyoaks, is about the revolution soon to come when general practitioners take over from Primary Care Trusts in handling funds. Co-written by David Spicer and practising medical satirist Dr Phil Hammond, it has closely observed character types in Dr Roy (Nigel Planer) and his brother Dr Hugh (Tony Gardner) who pursue their father's old medical practice in the house they were born in. They have a canny manager in Betty (Celia Imrie) who has taken on the retraining of Dr Jeremy (famous from TV but recently involved in scandal) because the fee the state pays for doing this is so big. While the writers are careful to indicate that much of what is happening now began under the Blair-Brown governments they are scarily predictive about the dangers of putting large budgets into the hands of people not trained to handle them. Listen and learn. Frank Stirling, sharp as a hypodermic, directs for independents Unique.
Gillian Reynolds, The Telegraph, 7th June 2011