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It's not particularly unpleasant, just boring now. Energy low, but not experiencing last week's ennui with most food and entertainment. Though it still amazes me that I have pretty much all the world's entertainment at my finger tips but struggle a bit to find anything to watch. And I am just a bit too tired to read more than a few pages at a time.
This evening I took BBC iPlayer suggestion and watched a classic episode of The Good Life in tribute to the late, great Penelope Keith (also the late greats Richard Briers and Paul Eddington and the alive great Felicity Kendal). T
he recommended episode was the Windbreak War and it's a proper classic, though you really need to have seen a lot of episodes to really get why this one is so good. I have almost certainly seen all the episodes of this show, just not for about 50 years.
Oh come on, that's insane. It can't be that long.
But we watched this as a family every week and unlike some of the family sitcoms (Terry and June springs to mind) I really loved it.
The daring and fun thing about this episode (and maybe it happened in other ones too, but this is the bit I remember) is when they all get drunk and start flirting quite heavily with each others partners. This was surely very bold for the BBC in the 1970s, as was the mention of wife-swapping, but although it's also a little cringy and odd, it says a lot about the characters, especially the Leadbetters, trapped in a life where they do what is expected of them. And if you lived next door to Felicity Kendal you would definitely fancy her a bit, whatever your sexual orientation. And she likes Jerry enough that she is flattered and only mildly outraged by his not entirely serious advances. She's not really interested in return, but she's kind enough to understand and flirt back a bit and enjoy the situation. Because ultimately they are friends and I think she understands that her neighbours are not really very happy, but that they do love each other.
Margo is also ready to let go, and Tom might even be up for it. Again it's the vulnerability of the character in drunkenness that is really interesting. She opens up about how sad she feels about not having a sense of humour and not being funny or getting jokes. I think there are a lot of people like this in the world, who laugh along when they are supposed to, but don't really understand why. Penelope Keith is the only one who really nails the drunk acting in the scene (the others are all fine, but not entirely authentic) but this is a great episode to show how great she was. She gets the last laugh and finally gets why something is funny - though again probably only because she is drunk and has let go.
There's a real tragedy to Jerry and Margo which is lightly but piercingly explored. It's a show about conforming and not conforming and how we're often not allowed to be who we really want to be. I don't think I got that when I was 8. I just liked the bird laying the eggs that turned into a flower and the weird feeling in my tummy that Felicity Kendal gave me (though I am sure I also really fancied Penelope Keith too). It's a very strong show and it still holds up and though there are some peripheral characters it's pretty much all about these four people. I don't think many comedies from the mid-70s would be as enjoyable to watch now or hold up as well. I was surprised by how much I liked it.
I also watched Rik Mayall - Magnificent B'stard, which made me laugh and cry. No one was more important for me in terms of propelling me into this lifetime of comedy. It's amazing that he was able to take the piss out of pseudo-intellectual idiot virgin students and still be an absolute hero to those same people. Weirdly I was never hugely into anything that he did after The Young Ones and Kevin Turvey and Flashheart, because for the snobbish comedy fan that I was, he couldn't live up to the standards that he himself had set for me. I never really got into Bottom and was appalled at him doing a mainstream sitcom like The New Statesman.
It's my bad. I was wrong. I have been a comedy fan and have had comedy fans and recognise that some of my fans were the same as me - there's something about discovering someone and believing they are yours that means the minute they do something different you are going to feel (and this word seems too strong, but it's true to how you feel) betrayed or at least let down. You need to turn against your heroes a little bit because you know you need to find your own way. Hopefully you eventually return to them and realise that it was your problem not theirs. But even if they lose that spark a little. Fuck, thank you for the spark. Rik Mayall was a fucking nuclear bomb.
My God I still love him though. I cried when I had to talk about his death on a talking heads thing a few years back and I cried again today.
