Mad Men (BBC Four)
Free Agents (C4)
A Very British Storm Junkie (C4)
Just Read with Michael Rosen (BBC Four)
The return of Mad Men, and they know what we want. For the very first shot -
our “Welcome back to 1960s Manhattan!” - Joanie's (Christina Hendricks)
magnificent arse filled the screen, as she zipped up the back of her
skin-tight crimson dress, and smiled at herself in the mirror.
Joanie's arse, for those who have not yet stared at it, is a deathless item.
In a world full of skimmed-milk, bony-ass women with the buttocks of
children, Joanie's arse is a clarion-call, a timpani roll - the oiled man
banging the gong at the start of Rank films. It is an arse you want to throw
a carnival for. It has become totemic among the womenfolk of the world. It
is our O-bum-a. It displays the aud-ass-city of hope.
For men, meanwhile, it is apt to recall Richard Burton's swooning, horny
encomium on first seeing the 19-year-old Elizabeth Taylor: “Her body was a
miracle of construction; the work of an engineer of genius. It needed
nothing except itself. It was smitten by its own passion. She was
unquestionably gorgeous. She was lavish. She was, in short, too much.”
When men look at Joanie's arse, they wish, once more, to walk upon the Moon;
to conquer the Poles; to discover America. It makes them want to show off.
So while Mad Men may ostensibly be a multi-award-winning HBO drama themed on
the palpitating neuroses hidden beneath the American Dream, it is, really,
about Joanie's arse. You're either into, or off, the show on that basis.
This week, for the opening episode of Season 2, Joanie and her be-hootie were
overseeing the arrival of an exciting new invention: the Xerox machine.
“Ladies, this might just be the most revolutionary thing that will ever
happen to you.”
The Xerox is the key marker in the difference between the first series of Mad
Men and the second. The first time around, it was 1960 - still basically the
1950s. The sexism was rampant and unchallenged. The status quo was rigid,
and unbreachable.
Now, however, times have changed. It's 1962 - the Sixties are finally starting
to coalesce around the twin nuclei of technology and change. The tectonic
plates are shifting. Peggy Olson (Elisabeth Moss) has finally entered the
all-male boardroom - although the whole office seethes with speculation over
her recent holiday weight loss. Was it a fat-farm - or did she have a secret
baby out of wedlock? (Of course she had a secret baby out of wedlock. No one
does a second storyline on salad abuse.)
Don Draper (Jon Hamm), meanwhile - ostensibly the focus of Mad Men, for those
bafflingly unmoved by Joanie's booty - greets 1962 with the quiet, damp
onset of impotence. As a consequence, anyone glibly postulating that, in the
advertising world, “Sex sells” is given short shrift.
As a man apt to frequent bouts of handsome gnomic-ness - imagine Dale Cooper
from Twin Peaks, drinking a highball - Draper, possibly addled by the
backing-up of his man-fluids, is currently outdoing himself. He closed the
first episode by quoting Frank O'Hara while posting a parcel to an
unidentified recipient, and kick-starting the big mystery of Season 2: “Now
I am quietly waiting for the catastrophe of my personality to seem beautiful
again, and interesting, and modern. The country is gray, and brown and
white, and trees ...”
And, meanwhile, Joanie's ass marches on into the future, towards Beatlemania.
More “workplace battle of the sexes” with Free Agents, the new sitcom set in a
talent agency, written by a former agent, Chris Niel. This time, we're in
modern-day London: the women wear berets and pink leather gloves and are
sexually liberated; the men wear trainers with a suit jacket, and are
palpitatingly dysfunctional.
Although Free Agents has sold itself on its rudeness - it starts with an
orgasm, throws in a “c***” by way of a livener, and contains a monologue
that ends with “I want clusterf***s, daisychains and hot golden showers” -
it is, really, a love story. Alex (Green Wing's Stephen Mangan, still
rocking the “inexplicably sexy donkey” vibe) and Helen (Sharon Pulling
Horgan, given notably less than Mangan to do in the first episode, but very
good at pretending to be drunk while adjusting an iPod dock) are both
emotionally tattered. Alex is sleeping in the office, crying over custody of
his two children, and Helen was bereaved just before her wedding, and she's
now giving herself some manner of internal flotation therapy using red wine.
Although the writing has to go through some screeching gear changes and wildly
pre-telegraphed hand signals to get where it needs to be at the end of the
first episode - no actor should have to shout “Well I wasn't superstitious
until my fiancé dropped dead of a heart attack!” in broad daylight, in the
middle of Soho, with people watching - the will they/won't they element (get
it together/get recommissioned thing) does feel Episode Two-watchy. More
importantly, as far as womankind is concerned, Sharon Horgan's outfits are
the best in TV since Sex and the City - 50 per cent less drag queeny and all
jewel-colours, lop-sided tailoring, and unexpected tights. I'm seriously
considering searching for the wardrobe designer Rosa Díaz on Facebook,
befriending her, and then “coincidentally” conducting our entire
relationship in Topshop, going: “Do you think this would suit me, Rosa? Now
suggest something so-wrong-it's-right from the show department.”
Last week, as the controversy raged over Girls and Boys Alone - the show where
a bunch of kids were basically thrown down a well, and had to eat each other
to survive - many asked what is going to become of Channel 4. Once a
finger-clicking, city-slicking maverick with, in particular, Friday nights
all sewn up (remember? It used to be Friends, Frasier, Graham Norton, King
of the Hill. No one ever went out on a Friday, just because of C4), C4 is
now a broken bag of a broadcaster, fatally weakened by the gigantic,
cancer-like Big Brother, which has twisted its entire broadcasting
physiognomy out of shape.
Although it's in no way a miracle cure, the dry sherry tone of A Very British
Storm Junkie provided the channel with the first vaguely healthy hour of
broadcasting for weeks. Really, you cannot go wrong with Stuart Robinson, a
41-year-old IT consultant from Leicester who is obsessed with chasing
extreme storms and dreams of being in the eye of one - and has just
discovered that a gigantic typhoon is heading towards Taiwan.
“That's great. That is great!” he says, Alan Partridge-ishly, bounding
downstairs to his wife. “I think I've got a storm!”
“Oh, really?” she asks, mutinously - face full of ironing and dish-washing and
the Hollyoaks omnibus.
Having readied his Storm Pack - snorkel, tinned beans and a glo-stick - Stuart
hooks up with his American storm-friend Roger in Taiwan and, in my favourite
scene in a documentary so far this year, prepared to drive into the centre
of a Cat 4 hurricane by hiring a rental car from the airport (at the Hertz
check-in desk: “If a tree falls on the car and squashes it flat, I want to
be covered.”) As you watch Stuart and Rog's glee in following these
meteorological binges - sky fighting sky, sky fighting land, land just
taking it like a bitch - you share their capering joy.
“There's nowhere else in the world right now I would rather be than on the
outer edge of this hurricane!” Stuart bellows, as the storm attempts to blow
him, upside and backwards, down the street like a skittle.
Alas, Stuart's wife doesn't see it quite like that. When he finds another
hurricane is due, he rings to tell her the good news - that he's going to
extend his mission. The crew rejoins him as he puts the phone down.
“Let's just say the wife's made me see her point of view,” he says, sadly,
packing his Storm Pack into his suitcase and returning to the mellow
drizzles of Leicestershire.
Finally, this week, the BBC got behind a huge initiative to promote reading in
children. To this end, Just Read With Michael Rosen spent a reasonable and
inspiring 45 minutes suggesting that children simply a) read more with their
parents, and b) hang out in libraries once a week. However, it was then
broadcast at 10.30pm, when all children are asleep, on BBC Four - a channel
watched only by people with lecterns. Yes. That ought to do it.
