Wow! Rani from The Sarah Jane Adventures has grown up, hasn’t she? Not so long ago, she was fighting aliens in Bannerman Road. Now, she’s all legs and seduction, stirring up Beaver Falls’ very own love quartet. A real Agent Provocateur.
Frustrated and star-crossed couplings are at the centre of things this week, as E4’s new comedy-drama constructs an A-Rabian tragedy from its usual building blocks of farce. And it makes for uncomfortable viewing.
Flynn’s intimacy with Rachel has been building up over the past few weeks, so regular viewers will have anticipated and feared the moment when Rachel pounced on the wrong man. A proper ‘shout at the telly’ moment, it should certainly complicate the dynamics for the rest of the series. But it has left Rachel’s Christianity looking like something of a plot device. One artfully composed shot of tearful prayer does not a convincing spiritual crisis make, no matter how cute said person may look when crying.
Still, if you were expecting an authentic depiction of religious doubt, then how much of the opening sequence did you miss? I haven’t seen so many water pistols and bikinis since the glory days of Baywatch. The heat, we were told, was making the campers more than usually frisky. But you wouldn’t have noticed much change in their behaviour from usual. This lot could get horny in a meat freezer, which made it a more than appropriate visual joke when, during the curfew party, a camper with a rodent mask was chased. That’s right – even the extras were playing a game of ‘hunt the beaver’.
And if you liked that joke, there were plenty of others like it – gags about virginity and prophylactics playing around the edges of the serious business to do with Flynn’s self-destructive pursuit of hedonism. Say what you like about this show but it knows its target audience and is clearly going for a feel-good summer vibe. It’s just it’s hard to feel good when likeable characters stray into such unlikeable territory. But that’s drama, I guess. Flynn was never going to be an uncomplicated hero to root for and he carries the audience’s goodwill only precariously.
Far more of an Everyman figure is Barry: permanently thwarted but blithely punching above his weight nonetheless. John Dagleish’s face suggests a quality of crumpled resignation which is thoroughly endearing and marks him out as much more than the comic relief. So here’s hoping that Kimberley will come to her senses and move on from the jock to the joker. Barry may have so far only scored a home run on the softball pitch; but I tell you – it’s him I’m rooting for.
Airs at 9pm on Wednesday 17th August 2011 on E4.