Over the summer I had a lot of time to sit and think, and I realised that everything I think and do and I say, I just want to be thinking it and doing it and saying it with you.
(Cathy from Mum)
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I feel compelled to highlight the above dialogue
because TV writing isn’t always held in the same esteem as movie writing. A few
months back, when looking for a wedding reading online, I found nothing but
movie and literary references. In the end we went for When Harry Met Sally, where Harry tells Sally all the things he
loves about her, concluding on, “When you realise you want to spend the rest
of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as
possible.” It’s the romantic urgency of the line that appealed to me; that carpe
diem feeling of when you’ve found something, someone, to just get on and make the most of
it, because in a finite life of passing years there simply isn’t enough time for hesitation. I won’t ever regret choosing Ephron’s words because they came from
a film we love, reflecting the feelings we felt.
TV though is giving Tinseltown a run for its money in terms of romanticism. In the final episode of Fleabag, Phoebe Waller-Bridge writes a perfect love speech for Andrew Scott's priest character:
‘Love is awful. It’s awful. It’s painful. It’s frightening.
It makes you doubt yourself, judge yourself, distance yourself from the other
people in your life. It makes you selfish. It makes you creepy, makes you
obsessed with your hair, makes you cruel, makes you say and do things you never
thought you would do. It’s all any of us want, and it’s hell when we get there.
So no wonder it’s something we don’t want to do on our own.
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| I've been to a lot of weddings and I've never heard a priest come close to doing a speech as good as this. Pic. BBC |
Although this isn’t a speech you would hear at a wedding, it’s one a registrar should share with a couple pre-ceremony. The devotion you feel to your partner does have costs. Your happiness is entwined with theirs. If they’re unhappy, you are unhappy. If they grieve, you grieve. Their mood is your mood: good or bad. Love makes you stronger than you’ve ever felt, but it also makes you weaker. You have to accept that someone holds your hope, heart and happiness in their hands; trust they won’t let it slip, slip through their fingers. That last line is the pay-off though: for all the horror, the vulnerability and insecurity it throws up, love is easier when you go in together. It’s Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130 written for the box set generation: a lament whose hard truths concede to quiet beauty.
In watching Mum this week I’ve gone back and looked at a few old episodes. The epigraph at the top of the page is one I missed on first viewing, but one I’m delighted to rediscover.
Golaszewski’s writing doesn’t
have the appearance of anti-romance like Waller-Bridge; it’s from the Ephron playbook
of gilded screenwriting. There’s the repetition of ‘think,’ ‘do’ and ‘say,’ but
with the subtle change of pronoun (‘I’ to ‘you’) that gives it its power. At
the end of series two, Cathy decides to release herself from the prison of
grief and guilt. These emotions that live in your head are necessary for some
time – the mortgage on happiness- but there comes a time when you feel you have
paid your debt in full, and to continue to pay senseless when you’ve paid back quite enough. In reaching out for Michael’s hand in the final scene, we see
Cathy’s thoughts made action: she waves goodbye to isolation, gesturing hello to
co-operation.
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| Michael (Peter Mullan) and Cathy (Lesley Manville) Pic. BBC |
The final series of Mum has been put out on iPlayer. It was
mine and The Girl’s intention to watch one a week as they went out on BBC Two, however, the greatness of it got the better of us and we watched them all.
For the benefit of the reader though, I’ll just talk about the ones that have
been transmitted on terrestrial.
Series three begins in a
different environment than we’re used to. Just as Golaszewski shifted setting
for the final series of Him and Her,
his previous sitcom, he’s done the same here. The similarity with his past
offering does not end there. Both final series switch time frames, becoming
more condensed in their plotting. Him and
Her’s conclusion ran episodically over a day, from morning 'til night. Mum spans a week, with the first titled ‘Monday’ going right through to ‘Saturday.’ Doing so raises the stakes, as the relentless march of
time denies the viewer a break from the action. With no chronological interludes, no fast-forwarding in time, we are there with the characters the whole
time, in their lives, rooms and situations, laughing, commiserating with
them along the way.
We begin with Cathy pulling up in her car, son Jason and girlfriend Kelly in the back. She exits and looks up, ‘ooh Christ.’ The blaspheme comes out of shock. Cathy is from suburbia: a semi-detached world of car on the drive, Bolognese on the hob. What she’s not used to do is country estates. This one is huge. More bedrooms than people. More drive than cars. More money than sense. Pauline, her brother’s girlfriend, comes out to meet them. She isn’t so overawed by the lavish environs, in fact she positively revel in it. ‘Hello, sorry to keep you waiting I was by the pool.’ She then proceeds to name drop ‘the pool’ into conversation with all the frequency of an insufferable celeb on The Graham Norton Show, so much so that Cathy can be in no doubt that this house does indeed have a pool.
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| It has a pool, don't you know. Pic. BBC |
We’re then taken on a tour of the house. Bear in mind this isn’t Pauline’s house: they’re renting it for Derek’s birthday; however, the way Pauline moves around the gaff is as if her name is on it. Derek, Pauline’s boyfriend-cum-man servant, sits on the sofa reading The Daily Telegraph. Pauline is thrilled to announce they have a larder, opining, ‘I don’t suppose you’ve ever had a larder, have you Cathy?’ She’s also delighted the house houses a piano, or as she calls it ‘pi-a-no.’ This woman is a post-watershed Hyacinth Bucket: a monstrous snob determined to elevate her status at the cost of others.
Later, we see her reading James Joyce’s Ulysses by the pool. Forget Lee Child or Jodi Picoult, what you really need to unwind on holiday is an impenetrable, stream of consciousness doorstop. The thing is with Pauline she knows the cultural signifiers, what makes someone middle class, yet she’ll never be one. You can acquire intelligence and wealth, but you can’t acquire class. It’s hardwired into your DNA: it’s where you were born, how you were raised, what school you went to – for good or bad you can’t escape it or buy your way out of it. By Golaszewski introducing Kumar and Claire, the homeowners they are renting from, we feel sympathy for Pauline and Derek. No matter how hard they try, they will never join the elite because they will never talk about owning a horse with the same ease Claire does.
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| Pauline reading James Joyce. Pic. BBC |
Away from Derek and Pauline,
Kelly and Jason are struggling to keep some big news under wraps. Kelly is
clearly pregnant. She won’t touch alcohol and complains of feeling sick and
tired the whole time. Meanwhile, Jason is worried that carrying a water bottle
might be too much for her. The two are the most conspicuous people imaginable.
If they killed someone, they would hide the body outside a police station. In a
touching moment Kelly seeks advice from Cathy over how a ‘friend from Sainsbury’s’
is concerned about her pregnancy. Seeing a young woman go to an older woman for
counsel is very moving. Despite Cathy going along with the pretence, her words
strike home and leave Kelly feeling much better for her 'friend.' So happy is she, she’ll just go off and text her, then 'have a big period.’ Lisa McGrills, who plays Kelly, was missing
from Bafta nominations this year; surely the same mistake can’t be made next.
Over the programme she’s bloomed into a character of warmth and surprising perception.
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| A fantastic performance from Lisa McGrills. Pic. Getty Images |
And finally, there’s Michael
and Cathy. Michael did not travel with Cathy, which makes us wonder what's
happened in the intervening time. Fortunately, he does turn up in episode one,
holding Cathy’s eyes in his own. The trouble, as in the last series, is
Jason. The two have to tiptoe their love around him, fearing his reaction.
Although the laughs appear with some regularity, Golaszewski addresses the big issues too: Is it ok to love someone else when your partner is no more? Does it betray what you had? Should you chase happiness to the detriment of others? Jason may seem selfish in
his evasions, invasions, threat and warnings, but a parent moving on has huge consequences
for the child too. Golaszewski has said in interviews that there’s
no villains in his show- and he’s right: there’s only humans.
The final episodes of Mum will melt you like- well, like butter.
I’ve written about Golaszewski in a previous blog, but I feel Mum may be his greatest triumph. Here,
he has created a comedy of manners wrapped up in a great love story, all whilst
shining a torch on grief. Not since The Office has pain, warmth and laughter been so skillfully handled. So don’t keep mum, tell everyone about it. Like love, it’s worth sharing.
Mum is on BBC
Two Wednesday at 10pm. All episodes are on BBC iPlayer.
My previous blog on the writer is here:
My previous blog on the writer is here:
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