Roger And Val Have Just Got In: Episode 1
We have a new Dawn French sitcom on the air, and your reaction to that sentence will depend largely on how funny you’ve found her in the past ten years.
The Vicar Of Dibley was phenomenally popular, unashamedly mainstream and very unlike almost anything else in her career, whether it was the anarchy of The Comic Strip, or the darkness of Psychoville. Even when in a double act with Jennifer Saunders, it wasn’t always about the falling over, being larger than life, and advertising segmented orange flavoured bits of chocolate.
It’s good to be reminded of this. Dawn French isn’t always served by her own material - that’s not to say that she hasn’t provided great comedy over the years, but it’s only with work like this that she’s allowed to be more nuanced, and provide more levels.
BBC Two's Roger And Val Have Just Got In is a comedy - occasionally laugh out loud funny - that doesn’t give a damn about shoe-horning gags into every second minute. In this, it shares a great deal with BBC Three's The Smoking Room, a comedy from a few years back that deserves to be a lot more fondly remembered than it actually is.
This opening episode promises great things. As well as focusing on a simple, uncomplicated idea to further the plot (or, to be accurate, distract you from the fact that there is no plot) , the writing manages to side-step many story points that, in lesser hands, would form the lynch pin of comedic misunderstandings at the expense of reality. When Roger speaks rather too often about a woman at work, Val reacts with the subtle, hidden jealousy borne out of decades of marriage - she gently enquires how old the woman is. When she’s told that the woman is in her early thirties, it’s clearly not the answer she was hoping for. However, she makes a visible effort to avoid pursuing the matter. It’s the sort of moment that takes Dawn French well beyond the world of Dibley, and something in the neighbourhood of Abigail’s Party.
In truth, it’s significantly warmer than Mike Leigh’s classic carnival of grotesques, but this is a very real and believable world, even when the two characters are speaking dialogue that sounds rather more like a redrafted script than unthinking speech. There are only two characters in the cast, and only one set - it seems unlikely that will change in forthcoming episodes - and as such, this seems to have the strength and muscle of a classic sitcom.
This hasn’t had a great deal of fanfare promoting it, and therefore, if you get around to watching it, you may indeed be the only one. But, at its own pace, with no laughter track and an absolute confidence in itself - as well as the initially disconcerting sight of the second character of two being played by Alfred Molina, otherwise known as 'Doctor Octopus' and the major villain in this summer’s The Sorcerer's Apprentice - this could well be a tiny, private treasure.
Airs at 10pm on Friday 6th August 2010 on BBC Two.
Reviewed by Andrew Allen.
