The boring twenties

Either minimalism hasn't hit Melbourne yet, it is already passé and clutter is the new clear, or there is simply a shortage of cupboard doors in Australia. How else would you explain the flats of the hip, angsty twentysomethings featured in the This Life/Sex In The City hybrid, The Secret Life Of Us (Channel 4)? They are so jam-packed with stuff, sometimes you're not sure where exactly the Bright Young Things are lounging/ snogging/ spouting cod profundities.

Of course, they are there somewhere amidst the books, CDs, fridge magnets, lamps, cups, plates, spice jars, kitchen utensils, posters, crocheted blankets and bric-a-brac (unless they're doing voiceover, in which case they might not be) but pinpointing their exact location is tough. Often, it requires a sonar device normally used in Channel 4 documentaries for finding shipwrecks, especially as Melbourne seems to be the Land of Perpetual Twilight. Is that Evan, the aspiring writer and promiscuous lad, you ask yourself, or simply a hat-stand draped with a t-shirt in front of an Oasis poster? Could that be smart-but-sad Dr Alex receiving oral sex from her best friend's boyfriend, or just a curiously lumpy cushion on a floral throw topped with a fringed lampshade?

The hurricane-in-Cher's-basement state of their apartments would certainly explain why these neighbours meet in their "third space" café bar, or on the roof of their building: there simply isn't room to get more than four people and their neuroses into one of the flats without filling a couple of big bags with nik-naks and foisting them on a local charity shop.

The writers and producers clearly know their way to the charity shop too, for how else would they have found the script? Granted, they might not have been setting out to make an original, sharp, funny and authentic drama, but The Secret Life Of Us is so second-hand, hackneyed and listless, it must have been pawed by more TV execs than Denise van Outen. That even before the opening credits are done, we have the line "Some nights are like a dream" and have glimpsed four breasts (on a pair of women in the same bed, probably post-coitus!) is testament to the tiresome and eye-rolling pedigree of this drama. By the end of the hour, there has emerged not so much a dramatic arc as a wavy line along the bottom of the graph; you wish that those were just a hat-stand and a lumpy cushion you saw instead of cardboard cut-outs straight from Central Casting. Roll on Home And Away's return. At least it doesn't ask to be taken seriously.

What a sceptical chap Bertrand Russell was. "To prevent resentment, governments attribute misfortunes to natural causes; to create resentment, oppositions attribute them to human causes," he wrote in 1928. This brings us rather neatly to Dispatches: Outbreak (Channel 4), an impressive, intelligent and in-depth look at the anatomy of the foot and mouth crisis and the government's handling of the epidemic.

I've never really had much sympathy for poor farmers in dire straits. For some reason, I've always had in my head that because they took full advantage of Thatcher's deregulation of the cattle feed market in the 1980s to make a bit extra dosh, they were responsible for the spread of BSE and subsequently CJD. Plus, every farmer I ever met was a nasty piece of work.

Similarly, anyone who has ever stayed in a rural B&B will know exactly what is wrong with the British tourist industry, and it's not burning pyres of cow carcasses. Admittedly, they aren't what you'd call photo opportunities, but there are the weird people who staff the tourist industry to consider as disincentives for holidaying in the UK. Whether they are the Addams Family-esque owners of country hotels, or the glum waitresses, guides and gift shop assistants at historic monuments - complete with Diplomas in Grumpy Unhelpfulness - sitting at Palma Airport suddenly seems very attractive a prospect. And let's not even mention the catering.

It wasn't that Dispatches changed my mind, but it certainly made me a bit more sympathetic. But just a bit.

Never mind Sharon Watts's taste in men in EastEnders - "Hello, are you a wife batterer? Great, the job's yours!" - when is she going to sort her hair? If only she'd get rid of that wig (which I bet she found in Cher's basement), things would look up for her. As it is, things are looking distinctly Miss Piggy.

By Gareth McLean
July 4, 2001
The Guardian

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