imagine…Miriam Margolyes: Up for Grabs
BBC One
★★★★★

Imagine review — Miriam Margolyes is a treasure, and an editor’s nightmare

Whatever your view of Miriam Margolyes (I think she’s fabulous), you cannot deny that she comes with a guarantee: she is biologically incapable of being dull. But Imagine: Miriam Margolyes — Up for Grabs (BBC1) surpassed all expectations. It was a joy from start to finish and easily the best one I’ve seen.

Who did not savour the queasy look on Alan Yentob’s face when she asked him sweetly: “How old were you when you had your first f***?” “Er, probably about f-fifteen,” Alan mumbled, adding: “I’m not sure we can leave this in.”

They did leave it in, happily. To chop it would have been a travesty. I loved the superb timing of her anecdote on The Graham Norton Show telling how she was arrested after being rude to a policeman and subjected to an internal examination. “They examined my front botty and my back botty,” she said, slight pause, “and of course they thought I wouldn’t like it.”

Margolyes is a one-off, a treasure, a fearless taker of no prisoners who produces a laugh a minute and says what others dare not. I imagine that editing this Imagine was a nightmare because there must have been so much gold they had to leave out. OK, we could live without the farting and I wasn’t keen on the Real Marigold Hotel stuff but no one’s perfect.

She is a vocal magician, slipping into accents like butter. Her voice talent allows her, said Richard E Grant, to shape-shift in a way that her body can’t. I had no idea she was the voice of the female Cockney chimpanzee in the PG Tips ad and the Cadbury’s Caramel bunny; she is, I thought by the end of it, seriously underrated as an actor. Only Margolyes would say of her younger years: “I did a great deal of sucking off as I seemed to be good at it.” Long may she live because we won’t see her like again.

Absolutely Fabulous: Inside Out
GOLD
★★★★

Absolutely Fabulous: Inside Out review – when Jennifer Saunders and Joanna Lumley cackle, it’s sheer joy

This retrospective on how Jennifer Saunders’s sitcom went from shambles to all-time great has a national treasure gravitas to it – and the juicy anecdotes make the show sing

There is something very Eddy and Patsy about Absolutely Fabulous getting an in-depth, bells-and-whistles retrospective, not for its 25th or even 30th anniversaries, but for its … 32nd. Absolutely Fabulous: Inside Out is an indulgent treat for fans, bulging out of its Lacroix sample sizes with gossip, memories, outtakes and a warm, if too brief, cast reunion. If, like many of the talking heads here, you believe it to be one of the greatest British sitcoms of all time – and it is, obviously, particularly the first three series – then this is a fantastic and revelatory deep dive into who and what made it so special.

As regular listeners of the French and Saunders podcast Titting About will know, Dawn French took some time away from their double act in the early 1990s to raise her daughter, leaving Jennifer Saunders without her comedy partner and in need of a new project. Saunders admits that at that point, her writing experience had been limited to sketches. But one of those sketches, Modern Mother and Daughter, saw French playing a Saffy character, and Saunders the mother, then called Adriana. You can see how much of the show is there already. It only needed the addition of best friend and fashion editor Patsy – whom Joanna Lumley poetically refers to as a “succubus … like ivy, or one of those insects that feed off you” – to flesh it out. If a single sketch could be nine minutes long, Saunders reasons, you only needed to put two of them together to call it a sitcom.

There’s a lovely against-the-odds narrative throughout. Saunders’ approach to writing Ab Fab appears to have been, shall we say, scattergun, and that was on a good day. The first series was largely written in advance, but later episodes would be worked out in the rehearsal room, with a lot of cigarettes (“We liked all the smoking,” says Lumley). Ruby Wax, who script edited, remembers one script that, in lieu of a written scene, simply said “something funny happens”. To Saunders’ credit, it did. It was so slapdash that Lumley admits she asked her agent to try to get her out of playing Patsy, who said that she should film the pilot anyway, and that it probably wouldn’t take off. Producer Jon Plowman remembers former head of comedy at the BBC, Robin Nash, sitting through the dress rehearsal for the pilot and noting afterwards that he never had found women being drunk very funny.

But plenty of viewers did, and it was a smash hit: the sort of crowd-pleasing comedy, as the director Emerald Fennell says, that only comes along once every decade. To watch it now, for the hundredth time, is to be reminded of how fantastically anarchic it is. The jokes still have fangs, and, to its credit, this doesn’t retrospectively clutch its pearls at some of the more outrageous ones: Patsy telling Saffy that she should have been aborted remains one of its most quotable and most vicious moments. Lumley says she asked if she really had to say the line, and Saunders, of course, insisted she did. This is a timely reminder, too, that as Patsy, Lumley puts in one of the greatest physical comedy turns in TV history, and she still doesn’t get nearly enough credit for how perfect a performance it is. Patsy simply eating is so funny that the cast can’t even talk about it now without cracking up.

Kirsty Young narrates, Saunders unearths her original notes, and it parades costumes from the archives, all of which give the documentary a national treasure-style gravitas. But what really makes it sing are the anecdotes, as unfiltered as Patsy’s liver. Wax talks about the inspiration for Edina, long rumoured to be the one-time PR guru Lynne Franks. The story she tells about sharing a taxi with Franks, and how that led to at least one part of Eddy’s character, is exquisite. Saunders, meanwhile, reveals another, more niche inspiration: Adriana Ivancich, the Italian noblewoman and teenage inspiration for Hemingway’s 1950 novel Across the River and Into the Trees.

June Whitfield, who played Mother, died in 2018; the last time the cast all got together was at her memorial. Jane Horrocks joins Julia Sawalha, Saunders and Lumley for a glass of Bolli, as they look over old Polaroids, watch outtakes and discuss which scenes they couldn’t get through because they were all laughing too much. It might sound luvvie, but it avoids that by sheer force of being so frank and entertaining. And above all, you get to see Saunders and Lumley watching old footage and laughing their heads off. “It was amazing, what we got to do, and it’s just a little comedy, and I loved it,” says Saunders. Delicious.

Taking Control: The Dominic Cummings Story
BBC Two
★★★★

Taking Control: The Dominic Cummings Story review — like a student poster come to life.

Among the many descriptions of our subject in last night’s Taking Control: The Dominic Cummings Story were “determined”, “challenging”, “dangerous”, “unpleasant”, “unreasonable” and, er, “dull”. Sorry? Peter Oborne didn’t elaborate much on his sniffy dismissal, but you sensed that the grandee journalist sees the prime minister’s chief adviser in a similar light to the makers of Emily Maitlis’s absorbing hour-long profile: as the confident student-union fresher who, on his third pint of the night, says the world needs smashing up and he’s the one to do it. We’ve all met, and been bored by, people like that.

Cummings has been doing his rage-against-the-establishment thing for much longer than you might imagine. He is a bit of a poser with a studied slovenliness, and we saw him in his first TV appearance (September 27, 1999) with specs on his head and a chest-baring open shirt. This was around the time he was deploying against the single currency the words “Take Control”, wrongly presented as a moment of lightbulb-pinging genius in the Benedict Cumberbatch drama Brexit: The Uncivil War. Never mind David Gauke or Theresa May, even Teflon Tony took hammerings from Demon Dom before the new millennium gongs had sounded.

Disney+'s The World According to Jeff Goldblum Is Smarter Than You Think

Disney+’s The World According to Jeff Goldblum has a deceptively simple premise: Jeff Goldblum discusses commonplace things or ideas for thirty minutes. At first blush, the series succeeds on Goldblum's ineffable charm - his halting speech and eccentric mannerisms - but the show is smarter than you think.

There are nine episodes of The World According to Jeff Goldblum available on Disney+, with new episodes dropping every Friday. Their titles are as germane as their subjects: “Coffee,” “Denim,” “Ice Cream,” “Sneakers.” Each episode features Goldblum interviewing aficionados of each subject, discussing his personal connection to each, and even asking questions like, “Is there some sort of mystery to this delicious food [ice cream]?” What might not be as clear as his explorations of these everyday items is that the show uses a form that is over 400 years old.

On Disney+, The Mandalorian rightfully gets most of the hype, but the smartest, most interesting original show on the service is The World According to Jeff Goldblum. Whereas explainer shows like Adam Ruins Everything and Mythbusters prove specific claims, Goldblum shows us that exploration, movement, and essaying unfold a world that is more interesting and complex than we ever thought.

Bauhaus Rules with Vic Reeves, review: this tin foil party was a playful paean to Bauhaus

The midlife crises of comedy duo Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer are playing out in contrasting styles across the BBC. No ponytails or Porsches are involved, thankfully. While Mortimer goofs around on riverbanks for BBC Two’s gentle gem Gone Fishing, Reeves was busy indulging his artistic side on Bauhaus Rules (BBC Four).

Coming after a compelling profile of textiles trailblazer Anni Albers and weighty documentary Bauhaus 100, this impish film was the highlight of a themed evening to mark the influential German art school’s centenary.

Reeves, whose real name is Jim Moir, has a sideline as a painter and made an enthusiastic, eccentric host. He aimed to bring radical Bauhaus principles to a new generation by seeing if six graduates of Central St Martins art college could embrace its teachings within a week.

They had to create a new artwork each day, sticking rigidly to Bauhaus rules. Setting their tasks were a veritable VIP guest list of Bauhaus-influenced bigwigs, including artist David Batchelor, fashionista Holly Fulton and typography titan Neville Brody.

They began by donning lab coats to practice rooftop breathing exercises, before being fed the eye-wateringly potent garlic mush that was a staple of the Bauhaus canteen. Then came the creative challenges: sculpting materials scavenged from skips, using Kandinsky’s principles of colour and shape, and designing household objects for Habitat. Well, if you can class a high chair for dogs, a portable bird bath and a cafetière that can’t make coffee as household objects.

Finally, they threw a Bauhaus-style party, with costumes and decor crafted from metallic objects. Cue tin foil capes, cutlery crowns and a suggestively placed shower head. Throughout the experiment, Reeves alternated between enlightening narration and irreverent asides.

This was a knowingly pretentious take on a traditional TV talent contest. Bauhaus Got Talent, perhaps, or Strictly Weimaring.

Any goths tuning in expecting a rockumentary about black-clad Eighties band Bauhaus might have been disappointed at first but would have soon been drawn in. The students were palpably inspired by their transformative week going back to art basics. This was a playful paean to creative freedom and collaborative spirit. The sort of self-indulgent yet irresistible endeavour that you would only find on dear old BBC Four.

Dwarfs in Art: A New Perspective review – a compelling reappraisal of the overlooked and undervalued

I love BBC Four documentaries about paintings, although I realise they are my equivalent of Slow Television, the genre that emerged briefly when Norwegian state TV broadcast a train journey in real time for hours and hours, and “watching paint dry” was useless as a metaphor. You would be forgiven, then, for glazing over at the prospect of yet another genteel tour of oil paintings and country houses, but to miss Dwarfs In Art: A New Perspective because of preconceptions would be a shame, as it offers much more than dry academia and nice scenery.

Richard Butchins’ documentary takes as its starting point representations of dwarfism in art and culture, and uses examples throughout history to challenge prevailing attitudes towards not only dwarves, but people with disabilities across the board. Butchins is not a dwarf, although he is disabled (as a result of childhood polio) and he has mental health issues, he explains, doing a loop around his temples with his finger.

Dwarfism interests him for many reasons; he calls it “a hidden chapter in both the history of art and the history of disability”. He also says that, unlike some disabilities, dwarfism can’t be hidden, and he uses the spectacle of difference to lead him into some fascinating discussions about othering, exploitation and the importance of representation.

Butchins starts in ancient Greece and Rome, examining manuscripts and icons that indicate how dwarves were seen as caricatures, figures of fun, as “a tool for entertainment”. This has, he posits, set a precedent for how people with dwarfism are seen today. He leaps forward to Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, then talks to people with dwarfism about how they deal with being called “Mini-Me” by strangers who don’t seem to see the offence in likening them to a “psychopathic baby”. From the Wizard of Oz to Life’s Too Short, Butchins pulls out example after example of dwarves being the butt of the joke.

This democratic approach to art, bringing in films, television and fairytales, with their wild-haired, grotesque monsters that symbolise the darkest sides of human nature, works a treat. Even garden gnomes, imported from Germany, get a look in, as Butchins wonders whether they became popular when dwarves stopped being fashionable accessories in high society and were relegated to porcelain ornaments instead. This may sound brutal, but his candour is as important as his curiosity. As he documents variations on the same story – people turned into entertainment (at best) as a result of their differences – you get the impression that he is quietly seething at this systematic reduction of people to commodities.

There was also a lot to enjoy as we careered towards the modern era. Kristina Gray wrote a children’s book about achondroplasia after realising that her son, who has this form of dwarfism, had few positive images to look up to. Even a doctor, she recalls, told her that her son, then six weeks old, would probably work in the entertainment business. Shocking as this is, it is easy to see why he might have thought that when we are shown how this stereotype has persisted through the ages. The footage and photographs of old freak shows was intriguing, but the archive interview of a man discussing their demise, from around the 1950s, was even more so: he explained that nobody wanted to be part of freak shows any more, because the welfare state meant they were no longer poor enough to need it. An interview with Peter Blake about his fascination with dwarves and freak shows was a respectful discussion from slightly different points of view, on the ethics of an old work called Dwarfs and Midgets. Diane Arbus, so often accused of exploitation for her famous photographs of carnival workers and dwarfs, was treated to a sympathetic analysis for her portraits of lives on the margins.

The overall question seemed to be whether we are moving towards a new perspective, not just in art, but in society as a whole. Butchins is cautiously optimistic. The hour ends with a paean to Peter Dinklage, whose character, Tyrion, in Game of Thrones is not a figure of fun, but a hero of the story. He is, everyone seems to agree, a sign that times are changing.

Morecambe and Wise in America
GOLD
★★★★

Morecambe & Wise in America review – Eric and Ern are back! What a joy

It’s a true Christmas treat, witnessing magical footage of the comedy nonpareils, seen for the first time in the UK. May our hearts bubble over with helpless laughter

This has been, I think we can all agree, a hard year. Perhaps even harder than 2016 and 2017, which themselves … weren’t great. And last night I went for dinner with a friend, who pointed out that this is not even the end but barely the beginning – let alone the beginning of the end – for either Trump or Brexit. And that both, in fact, are the opening salvoes in a war that will dog us until the climate change it has led us to ignore kills us all.

But! It doesn’t matter! No, really. Because of one thing and one thing only: new footage, never before seen (in the UK), of Eric and Ernie – the greatest, the nonpareils, of everything good, holy and worth not crunching down on the cyanide capsule for – delivered to our doors this evening and for the next two weeks by Jonathan Ross on Gold. Morecambe & Wise in America is an account of the comedy duo’s five years of tripping across the pond to appear on the US’s biggest variety programme, The Ed Sullivan Show, in the 1960s. So, a new Morecambe and Wise Christmas special, you could say, while barely paltering with the truth, here in 2018. Let your heart bubble with happiness accordingly.

Mine did throughout last night’s opening episode. Partly at the interviews with Morecambe’s wife Joan and two of their children, who so clearly adored and adore him still. Partly at the laughter of Glenda Jackson, Anita Harris, Nicholas Parsons, Diana Rigg and other stars of stage and screen as they remembered taking part in the pair’s sketches at the height of their UK television fame in the 70s and 80s. Partly at the way the faces of today’s comedians, and of Vince Calandra (talent coordinator on The Ed Sullivan Show) fill with awe at the technical mastery of Eric and Little Ern at work before they succumb inexorably to helpless laughter like the rest of us.

But mostly, of course, it bubbled with joy at seeing the new stuff. Ed Sullivan was on one of his European talent-scouting missions when he took his seat at the 1962 London Variety show at the Palladium. Morecambe and Wise, who had been friends since they were 15 and working as a double act since 1941, effectively topped the bill. They had fully recovered from their false start with the BBC (a show called Running Wild, which was so bad that it led one paper to publish the legendary review that began “Definition of the week: TV set – the box in which they buried Morecambe and Wise”) and were now riding high with their ATV show Two of a Kind, over which they had full approval of scripts written by Dick Hills and Sid Green. When Sullivan saw them, he immediately booked them for three appearances on his hugely popular and powerful show.

They went on as absolute unknowns and decided to stick with some tried-and-tested routines for their first appearance. They had a dress rehearsal, which Eric likened to playing landladies’ night in Blackpool. If you need this translating, see me afterwards. The short version is that it didn’t go well.

The dress rehearsal, of course, is not on tape. But their actual appearance – after Sullivan introduces “More-CAM and Wise!” – is. The first few jokes are greeted with the sound of bafflement, which is, unfortunately, silent. “I’ve got sweaty palms,” says Eric’s son Gary as he watches in the family living room. His sister Gail nods tensely.Then we all watch as a quarter of a century of friendship, practice and experience come into play alongside their irreducible, unreproduceable chemistry. Their confidence and timing never falter. The audience smells no blood and begins to relax. The three-foot sword swallower gag gets a laugh, the slapping routine gets a bigger one. By the time Eric is catching things in his paper bag, they are away.

But they had to do better the next time. And they did. They went with less crosstalk and more visual gags, and ended with Eric falling through the scenery. By the time they got to their third appearance, they were able to persuade the host himself to take part in the “Boom-Oo-Yatta-Ta-Ta” routine and despite – no, not because of, despite – Ed Sullivan remaining resolutely Ed Sullivan throughout, it killed. “He was usually pretty bad at these things,” Calandra recalled of his boss with an unmistakeable note of pain at the memory of gags ruined. “This is the best I’ve ever seen him. He usually screws it up completely.”

Such a funny way to make a living. But thank God they did. And Jonathan Ross has the grace and sense to stay out of the material’s way. More joy next week. It will be a happy new year to begin with at least.

The Victoria & Albert Museum is many people’s ‘happy place’, but for me, there’s a particular space within it that feels like paradise. The V&A’s William & Judith Bollinger Gallery has over 3,000 jewellery treasures on display, from Queen Victoria’s coronet and a collar from 8th Century BC Ireland, to items by great masters like Lalique and Belperron and everything in between. The two floors are dark and narrow, with light pooling on the objects, and a more beautiful place to spend hours and hours gazing in wonder doesn’t exist – to me, at least.

Clare Phillips, curator of the gallery, is legendary in jewellery circles. Jewellery historian, author, and lecturer, her knowledge and passion for the subject is renowned, so any opportunity to hear her speak is grabbed. Secrets of the Museum (BBC2) has returned for a second season, and episode two – which aired last night and is available on iPlayer – has a particular focus on Phillips and two recent acquisitions to the jewellery gallery (as well as a heartbreakingly tiny Victorian era teddy bear and embroideries from the Epic Iran exhibition.)

“The V&A has always been committed to acquiring contemporary work,” Phillips says as she introduces the Vulcan ring by Ghanaian-born British jeweller-maker Emefa Cole. “We bought contemporary work in 1851, and we’ve more or less been doing it ever since.” It’s an amazing reminder that everything on display – whether it’s 10,000 years old or 10 days old – was once ‘contemporary’ for its time. 

“It’s a glorious ring,” she says of the boldly scaled piece made from oxidised silver and gold leaf. “It’s not a ring I would wear every day, but I would take great delight in wearing it. I would probably fold my arms as I did and display from the opposite elbow of the other arm.” And with that, Phillips has dictated how all people who want to show off their rings should position themselves from here on out.

The show visits Cole at Goldsmith’s, where she shows Phillips how she carves her work from hunks of bright blue wax, filing and scraping away in meditative silence, before smoothing surfaces out with a flame and having the final design cast using the 6,000 year old lost wax casting technique. Cole – softly spoken and humble – explains how her fascination with volcanoes informs her work. “This ring relates to the volcano in terms of having these lava tubes that are created,” she says. “These amazing, cavernous spaces beneath the earth, created by the volcano.” 

I’ve handled the ring myself, and stared into its mysterious depths, but the benefit of camera work and a large screen reveals the undulating interior of the ring at much better magnitude. “I particularly love the view of it that you get, almost like the sun rising over a mountain with the gold leaf just showing on the far side of the crater,” says Phillips as she gazes at the ring from the side. 

The camera watches as Cole and her son, Xavier, 16, arrive to see the ring on display for the first time. “It’s always a tense but joyous moment when people come in to see their work,” Phillips says. The visiting duo are led to the space where Cole’s ring sits in a group of around a dozen rings acquired since the 1950s that are inspired by the natural world. “Oh wow,” whispers Cole in that hushed tone so many of us adopt in museums. “Oh my goodness! Oh, it’s in good company as well!” she smiles delightedly, as her son Xavier says “It makes it look like it’s meant to be there.” 

“It’s preserved forever in the national collection,” Phillips explains. “We’re certain that it will be out for a good many years.”

The second acquisition, the “Peony Brooch” by Taiwanese jeweller Cindy Chao, is introduced by Phillips with an impressive number. “A hundred and five large oval rubies and a multitude of tiny, circular rubies (are in it),” she says.

The story of the brooch is told succinctly but poignantly. “The large rubies come from a necklace belonging to the donor’s mother,” Phillips tells us of this glimmering, rich red piece taking up most of the palm of her hand. “Ten years elapsed and Cindy completely rethought the jewel and came up with this magnificent peony. It’s an extraordinary virtuoso piece.”

The brooch consists of seven individual petals, each of which has been hand sculpted in wax before being cast from purple titanium which is only visible from the back. “Cindy envisaged it as a gift from a mother to a beloved daughter,” Phillips says. 

The camera follows the brooch as it is placed on a minimalist mount. “We hope the mount will just disappear and the peony will be floating in the light. I’m very excited that this marks the end of quite a long process but actually it’s just the beginning.” 

The lighting is tweaked to perfection before Phillips stands back to gaze at the newcomer. “It looks as if it always had been there,” she says.

Gaga for Dada: The Original Art Rebels Wise in America

BBC Four

Gaga for Dada: The Original Art Rebels, BBC Four

Inspiring student pranks and political satire, Dada is the lifeblood of 20th century culture

If you’ve had half an eye on BBC Four’s conceptual art week, you’ll have noticed that the old stuff is where it’s at, with Duchamp’s urinal making not one but two appearances, equalled only by Martin Creed, that other well-known, conceptual stalwart (who actually isn’t as old as he looks). The BBC would say that this is because 2016 marks the centenary of Dada, the anarchic, absurdist art movement (if a movement is what it was) that saw artists begin routinely to challenge and ridicule accepted ideas about art – what it is, why it is and what it’s for.

The other reason, as demonstrated in Tate Britain’s disastrous Conceptual Art in Britain: 1964-1979 show earlier this year, is that if you take away the lavatorial mischief-making of Duchamp’s urinal and Manzoni’s tinned shit, the discussion of conceptual art can all too easily slip into beard-stroking self-parody.

Certainly Vic Reeves (or Jim Moir as he was tonight, although what the difference is who knows) did a good job of persuading us that Dada is at the root of everything subversive, silly and conceptual in the 20th century and beyond, with his own brand of humour anticipated in the nonsense-language performances at Zurich’s Cabaret Voltaire. A stunned audience looked on as Moir donned a cardboard costume to re-enact Hugo Ball's Magical Bishop speech of 1916: it was pure Vic & Bob and bizarre proof that there really is nothing new under the sun.

Martin Creed, an artist as barmy as he is delightful, served as a sort of living embodiment of Dada, not least because no-one, including Moir, can ever tell whether he’s taking the mick or not. Having sparked tabloid outrage with Dadaesque installations like Work No. 227: The Lights Going On and Off, 2000, Creed greeted with amused interest the news that his installation Work No. 200: Half the Air in a Given Space, 1998, had in fact been done by Man Ray in the 1920s.

Likewise, animator Terry Gilliam revealed that an early review had described him as “a product of Max Ernst”, whose collages he had in fact never seen. Shown a film by Hans Richter featuring the silly walks that have since become a Monty Python trademark, he, like Creed, was unperturbed, preferring to see these much earlier incarnations as evidence of the continued vigour of Dada. As they saw it, Dada was a sort of continuous revolution, relevant today but born out of the horror of the First World War, when one form of madness was offered as a response to another.

Short of a sidekick to banter with, Moir’s relentless hilarity needed a focus, brilliantly provided by Martin Creed who was more than a match for him in the silliness stakes, throwing down the gauntlet by casually revealing the neatly dismantled Fiat Panda in his spare room. If that brought back memories of undergraduate high jinks, the essentially Dadaist sensibility of the student jape was taken as an excuse for Reeves, accompanied by a game Cornelia Parker, to rather lamely stick balaclavas on the Bond Street statues of Roosevelt and Churchill.

Like much of Vic Reeves’s work it was an acquired taste that fluctuated wildly between overdone funniness and more subtle humour that delivered moments of insight. For some, the presence of Jim Moir will no doubt smack of  “dumbing down”, but really, this just isn't the case: who better to talk about Dada than someone who has spent his entire working life in a Dadaist mindset?