TELEVISION: Andrew Worsdale
THE state of Britain’s independent TV drama took a nosedive in 1992, when Carlton Television won the franchise for the greater London area and started playing to the lowest common denominator. Class Act — SABC 3’s new Saturday night sitcom — financed by Carlton in 1994, is no exception.
This 14-part series features Joanna Lumley as a high-society super-bitch, Kate Swift, whose businessman husband disappears with all the family wealth, leaving her penniless. In the first episode she manages to ascertain that he has been murdered; along the way she is joined by a drunken, cowardly journalist, Jack, and a butch Autralian traveller and petty thief, Gloria. For the rest of the series, this “unlikely” intrepid trio work together to track down the missing family millions; naturally, they run into various adventures on the way.
The first episode is fairly diverting, with Lumley doing a sober variation on Patsy from Absolutely Fabulous. Nadine Garner as the Aussie is nice and spunky, but an inordinately over-the-top and cliche-ridden performance by John Bowe as the dipsomaniac journo ruins the show.
By the second episode, the flaws become increasingly clear. Michael Aitkens’s writing is hopelessly overdrawn and self-consciously ironic, and Jane Howell’s direction constantly compromises itself with a strained need to play for laughs. What’s most at fault, though, are the plot-lines. There’s nothing new here, just a dressed-up version of Agatha Christie or Columbo with a couple of Chelsea in-jokes and some cliched “colourful” characters.
What makes it worse is quite the most abysmal music score I’ve heard on telly in a while (any of our woeful local TV tunes would beat this one). Composer Andy McKay, who did a good job on the feature film Jack and Sarah, should be ashamed of himself. Coming from celebrated producer Verity Lambert (who produced the amazing Aussie movie A Cry in the Dark), this is annoyingly boring, trivial stuff, executed with a self-satisfied smile.
But make no mistake, this is television — it is instantly disposable. I don’t see it generating a major following, except, perhaps, among die-hard Lumley fans, who might enjoy her ribald performance. But even that pales after a while. It just shows what happens when TV drama is relegated to the kind of supermarket mentality the Yanks excel in.
The first episode of Class Act is on SABC 3 on Saturday at 8.30pm