 Starring: Alan Davies, Lesley Sharp, Penelope Wilton, Jessica Hynes
Director: Joe Wright
Year Of Release: 2001
Plot: Bob is a gay man who’s getting fed up with spending his evening in clubs and bars. He bumps into Rose, who’s in a relationship with a nice guy she doesn’t really love. While Rose fancies Bob, he doesn’t tell her he’s gay (although she finds out fairly quickly), which starts an awkward courtship where Bob and Rose embark on a relationship, but can it survive when the man has always been gay and is adamant he isn’t bisexual? |
Just a shorter one today, to point out the negative side of the re-emergence of Doctor Who on UK TV. You may wonder what the BBC’s sci-fi Timelord has to do with the six-part comedy-drama Bob & Rose, but they share Russell T Davies, who wrote the 2001 TV miniseries and has also been in charge of Doctor Who ever since it came back to British screens in 2005.
I know a lot of people love Doctor Who and feel it has completely refreshed British science fiction, but the downside is that it’s taken up all of Davies time and robbed us of one of the few writers creating fresh, witty and genuinely original TV drama in Britain. In a world full of murder mysteries, emergency services shows and staid period drama, Davies wrote series that took on modern, edgy subjects, but which were entertaining and funny and never felt like they were trying too hard. He also has a remarkable skill for creating shows where every character is fully formed and interesting, and fits into a complex yet cohesive world that feels real. They were rare shows that felt like they were about recognisably real people.
Perhaps the most impressive example of this was 2003’s two-parter The Second Coming, where Davies imagined a new Son of God arriving in modern Manchester, and managed to create a character who was witty and very human, and yet you could believe he genuinely might be divine. It was a complete different Son of God to what we’d ever seen before, but seemed both more human and potentially godly, simply because of Davies knack for creating ‘real’, humorous characters. It was also the first time Davies worked with Christopher Eccleston (who played the Son of God, Stephen Baxter, in The Second Coming), and later became Davies’ first Doctor Who. Incidentally the second new Timelord had history with Russell T Davies as well, as he’d starred in Casanova, which Davies wrote.
Davies big breakthrough came in 1999 with the original British version of Queer As Folk, which broke new ground in the depiction of gay themes, but its real achievement was in creating a set of characters that seemed so believable that the show drew in a far wider audience than would normally be expected to watch a gay drama. He followed it up with the excellent Bob & Rose, The Second Coming and Casanova, all of which were excellent and a real cut above most other shows on TV.
However then he got the job of bringing Doctor Who back to TV and he’s busied himself with that for the last five years. While Who is good, no one has stepped in to fill the void to create TV drama about modern issues, filled with wit and genuinely real seeming characters, which feel like they’re exploring life in contemporary Britain in new and interesting ways. Most others who’ve tried to do it have just ended creating fairly tedious TV, which has ensured ever more of the schedule is filled with safe but mind-numbing murder mysteries, emergency services shows and staid period drama.
However there is a silver lining, as not only did Davies segueing from witty modern dramas into sci-fi mean we got Doctor Who back, which has been very entertaining for the past few years, but he’s now decided to pass the reins on. As Who fans will now, Russell T Davies is leaving the series behind at the same time David Tennant does, which means we’ve got two more Davies written/produced Doctor Who specials to come, and then he’ll be off to do something else. Although the temptation might be for him to do more sci-fi, what I really hope if that we get more excellent series like Bob & Rose, that deal with unusual modern subjects in a witty, entertaining style.
Oh, and incidentally it's also worth mentioning that four of the six episodes of Bob & Rose were directed by Joe Wright, who went on to find Hollywood success with Pride & Prejudice, Atonement and The Soloist, so it's certainly a mini-series with a great pedigree.
TIM ISAAC
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