NETFLIX
because of some imagined superstition). There was more from Rory Stewart and Alastair Campbell on their The Rest Is History podcast. Sometimes, voices of friends hove into earshot. There was Maureen Lipman offering a dose of laughter, with a young Canada goose called Ryan Gosling (Maureen and Friends, Radio 4). Then came Richard Cohen’s book Making History, being read in ten parts, with the line ‘Machiavelli was not really very Machiavellian.’ And Simon Jenkins was down the line to The Jeremy Vine Show on Radio 2: ‘I totally sympathise with the Ukrainians, but if every country in a dispute with its neighbours can ask the West to come to its aid, on pain of a third World War, it’s just what Putin wants. This is exactly how world wars do start… It is not our dispute.’ That did wake me up. There was a spate of north-east accents on Radio 4. Hailing from the north-east myself, I was braced for it, having just bestowed plaudits on Helen Mirren and Jim Broadbent for nailing the Tyneside accent in the film The Duke. Radio 4’s eight-part Our Friends in the North began, revived by Peter Flannery from his TV serial of 30 years ago. Its narrative started in 1965, just when I was up there in my gap year, learning to be a reporter. It’s all so familiar and horrible. T Dan Smith was intent on transforming Newcastle into Brasilia, demolishing the old city centre, aided by his architect John Poulson. Dirty money, lying politicians, urban neglect and decay, high-rise buildings that were deathtraps… Couldn’t happen today, eh? But the accents were impeccably Geordie. As they were again in I Must Have Loved You, a play about the more palatable Tyneside association with music. It was 1965 again – the era of the Animals. It was a collaboration between Sting (once Gordon Sumner from Whitley Bay) and Michael Chaplin. Accurate references – to Chas Chandler and the J G Windows record shop – enhanced it, as did the Sting songs. I wonder how many other listeners were checking the authenticity. Kate Hutchinson’s recommended podcast The Last Bohemians featured the artist Maggi Hambling, who had just given an interview to John Wilson’s This Cultural Life on Radio 4. I thought I’d compare them. Well, they were almost word for word the same: both interviewers simpered slightly. But then Hambling – posh, smoky, scathing – is 66 The Oldie Spring 2022
always good value, like Hockney. At the end, she told Wilson she just had to go to the lavatory. ‘It’s been fine, John,’ she was heard to say. ‘Thank you.’ Wilson (obviously wounded): ‘Fine?’ But it was Hutchinson who got her to be more quotable: ‘I’m a woman. I’m a dyke. And I’m older. All very hip things to be.’
TELEVISION FRANCES WILSON Bonkerton, as Bridgerton (Netflix) is now known, is back, with its intimacy co-ordinator again presiding over the rumpy-pumpy. It’s a tough job, but someone’s got to do it and her name is Lizzy Talbot. Talbot’s remit is to choreograph the sex scenes while ensuring that the actors are in a ‘safe space’, which means creating three barriers between the bodies. These are achieved by a semi-inflated netball which allows the couple to roll around without touching, merkins (pubic wigs) for that extra layer of covering, invisible, strapless thongs which stick to the bum, and dainty pelvic cushions made of lambswool. Lizzy’s kitbag also contains nipple daisies, breath mints, lubricating aloe vera, heat pads and glycerine spray. We’ve come a long way from Last Tango in Paris, where Bertolucci’s only prop was butter. With this paraphernalia in mind, I re-watched the shagging montage in Season 1, where Daphne and the Duke of Hastings release their pent-up desire all over his country estate (filmed at Castle Howard). ‘There’s so much going on there,’ Talbot explained in an interview. ‘We were inside, outside, up ladders; we were everywhere! We were working in the dry and in the rain, on flagstone floors and up against walls and in Regency beds.’ It apparently took three months to perfect the three-minute sequence, and if this is the effect of deflated balls and woolly cushions and heat pads, the sex shops are
stocking the wrong hardware. Bridgerton offered the best sex on television. Neither meaningless nor embarrassing, nor extraneous to the plot, here was an articulate exchange between two partners with a great deal to say to each other. With a starter as good as this, what could Season 2 posssibly offer as a main course? The eight Bridgerton siblings, named in alphabetical order, belong to the grandest family in Grosvenor Square. Having watched Daphne discover her libido, we’re now following the fortunes of the eldest, Anthony (Jonathan Bailey), who is also the Viscount. Our first view of Anthony, in Season 1, was up against a tree in Green Park in the company of an opera singer, his handsome bottom heaving up and down. The bottom itself, I now understand, was encased in skin-tight, bottom-coloured underwear. Anyway, Anthony, 29, the paterfamilias of his seven siblings, now has his breeches back on and is finding himself a viscountess among the debutantes. Because love causes nothing but pain, he is opting for a business arrangement with this season’s ‘diamond’, the anodyne Edwina Sharma (Charithra Chandran), fresh off the boat from Bombay. Edwina is chaperoned by her statuesque sister, Kate (Simone Ashley), a hunting, shooting tornado of a girl determined that Edwina should marry for love. Kate’s opposition to Lord Bridgerton as a match and Lord B’s irritation with Kate’s interference result in an articulate exchange, and we all know what that means. Except that the bonking in Season 2 is much ado about nothing. Lizzy Talbot’s genius can be admired in two minutes at most over the seven episodes, which will leave 40 million excited viewers as deflated as one of those netballs. For those not yet addicted to Bridgerton, it may come as a surprise that the Regency marriage mart contains Indian debutantes, but the world reimagined by the show’s creator, Chris
Phew! Phoebe Dynevor (Daphne) and Regé-Jean Page (the Duke of Hastings)
