SHAKESPEARE'S MOTHER: The secret life of a Tudor woman
(BBC4, Thursday of last week) delivered meatier fare than its
tabloid title suggested. It takes an act of will to overcome my
aversion to its presenter, Michael Wood, whose delivery suggests
that he is in love with the subject of his programmes, and wishes
to raise our emotion to a similarly heightened level, but here he
introduced us to something really valuable.
Mary Arden's life story is an exemplar of the successive
upheavals of 16th-century England: she lived through the reigns of
four monarchs, and saw four changes of religion, at a time when, of
course, religion affected every aspect of everyone's life. Her
progress was as much social, political, and cultural as religious:
her father rose with the rise of a new middle class, and her
husband became a leading player in the life of
Stratford-upon-Avon.
The narrative made the compelling television it did because of
the remarkable level of survival: her childhood home was discovered
a few years ago; inventories and wills give us accurate evidence of
her life; Stratford - far more than most English towns - still has
buildings and institutions that are proud to continue their Tudor
function; and the period reconstruction of her farm offered a more
authentic illustration of her daily life than most documentary
reconstructions can manage.
We are interested in Arden in the first place because of her
grandson; but the more we heard about her, the less significant
William became: her story was of absorbing concern in its own
right. As a way of presenting the successive revolutions of the
English Reformation, and the destruction of a millennium-long way
of relating to the world, this film, I can imagine, would fascinate
people who were not naturally disposed to English Midlands
Reformation studies.
We saw Stratford's town council in session today in a manner
that would have been largely familiar to Shakespeare's father; the
machinations of another such council lie at the heart of The
Casual Vacancy, BBC1's new drama series, based on the novel by
J. K. Rowling. This sets up a series of contrasting opposites: the
heart of the town is a Country Life idyll of
honey-coloured stone, but the Field estate houses semi-feral
scroungers; and the council is run by conservative NIMBYs opposed
by ineffective do-gooders.
It has a stratospheric cast of acting royalty, and looks
fabulous, but the presentation of contrasts is too formulaic, and
the characters are too close to caricature. It feels perilously
like pantomime rather than drama dealing with serious issues.
In Young War Widows (ITV, Tuesday of last week), three
women told in their own words what it is like when your beloved
husband is killed serving Queen and country in Afghanistan. Many
aspects of the production - slow motion, soppy music - were
emotionally manipulative; but, overall, this was a valuably honest
portrait of bereavement and loss. It was a paean to the power of
love.
They are all now finding ways to rebuild their lives and
discover new hope and purpose.