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Victoria Wood's first TV series (follow-up to a 1981 one-off) saw her teamed
with Julie Walters, a friend and collaborator since 1978. Walters not only gets equal billing, but is, at this stage, in danger of overshadowing her partner. She
is visibly the more accomplished actress, and exudes a confidence that the more
introverted Wood can't always match. The material, though, is unmistakably
Wood's.
But although her distinctive style is already evident, the series suggests
that Granada, and perhaps Wood herself, weren't quite sure how to position her.
The format and staging is essentially off-the-peg ITV light entertainment, when
Wood's subtle, intricate comedy would have benefited from a more tailored
presentation. The guests, too, suggest that the producers couldn't decide
whether she'd work best with variety acts or alternative comedians (Rik Mayall,
John Dowie).
However, the series improves from its shaky start, and Wood finds ways to
shape the format to suit her strengths, notably with endearingly self-deprecating
interludes featuring her and Walters out of character, trying to persuade
Granada's security guard to let them in, or wondering why the producer fails to
congratulate them after the show.
Wood's comic preoccupations are already in place, with sketches based on
class misunderstanding (mismatched computer daters: "Do you like Manet?", "Well,
I spend it if I've got it, obviously."), the pricking of pretensions, social
cruelty and everyday eccentricity. But the songs, however witty, are too much to
the fore, and the detailed character-studies of Wood's later work are notably
absent.
The one recurring character is Walters' appalling agony aunt Dorothea Chubb,
who addresses the audience each week on "the little problems we all face as we
ladder the tights of life". Bitchy, bewigged and dressed in a lurid pink
twin-set ("dyed to the exact colour of Daddy's face before his second stroke"),
Dotty dispenses her dubious wisdom with the brook-no-dissent confidence of a
true provincial tyrant - an ancestor of Patricia Routledge's Kitty in the later Victoria Wood - As Seen on TV (BBC, 1985-86).
One particularly ambitious sketch features a victim of a fertility drug
overdose and her legions of babies ("742 to start with, but a couple got mislaid
on the way back from the hospital"). The set is strewn with 70 howling toddlers
(one of them also called Victoria Wood), collected through an advertisement in
the Manchester Evening News.
Mark Duguid
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1. Two gossips (2:38)
