A married couple, probably in their mid-fifties, are at an airport departure lounge. They're bickering, amicably, about chips and jacket potatoes (but not mash, we can all agree how great that is) and they're, not unreasonably, outraged about the price of ketchup sachets.
The conversation continues on the plane. For several long minutes. It's an inauspicious start to a programme but Marriage (BBC1/iPlayer, directed and written by Stefan Golaszewski) doesn't begin dull by default. It begins dull by design.
Or at least prosaic. Quotidian perhaps. We see Ian (Sean Bean) and Emma (Nicola Walker), the couple in question, lying on the couch watching telly together, visiting B&Q, eating crisps, folding clothes, scraping leftovers off dishes, talking about crumpets, making sandwiches, and, eating toast. There is A LOT of toast eating in Marriage.
As their mid-range motor sits outside on a suburban street surrounded by fallen autumnal leaves, we see Ian and Emma perfunctorily, but lovingly, kiss each other goodbye and we're in a world, familiar to many of us, where every social interaction begins with brewing a cup of tea. Often entire scenes take place in complete silence but that silence isn't necessarily Pinteresque. It's not covering up some deep rooted trauma. It's not a loaded silence.
It's just how life often is. If anything it reminds me of early episodes of Brookside. Ian and Emma live in a pleasant, not flash but nicer than my place, suburban house and they clearly adore and respect each other but, as with all lives, there are underlying tensions and as with so many men of his generation, Ian would, for the most part, rather not talk about them.
He'd prefer to complain about ketchup stains inside a lift at a company he's had an interview with. Ketchup crops up a lot. But so do the painful process of ageing and the hurt of loneliness. Ian and Emma have been together for twenty-seven years and Ian has recently lost his mum to cancer and found himself without work. He's the oldest applicant, by far, for most of the jobs he goes for. He won't admit he's lonely and he won't admit he's bored but he's clearly got too much time on his hands.
Just as Emma's career seems to be on an upward trajectory. Her boss Jamie (Henry Lloyd-Hughes) is a fairly typical obnoxious alpha male. He likes fast cars, expensive suits, unsuitably young women, and executive bugle. When Emma has to go away with him on a conference that involves them both staying in a hotel overnight, Ian is consumed by jealousy.
Even though, behind their backs, Jamie calls Emma a "boring old bitch" and Ian her "creepy fucking husband". He's entitled, arrogant, and he rudely speaks down to people who do what he considers less important jobs than him. Despite what he's said about Emma, you can never rule out that he may make a play for. If only in some kind of rotten power game.
Emma's got enough on her plate already. Her dad Gerry (James Bolam is now 87 and Only When I Laugh seems a long time ago) feels abandoned by her despite the fact she visits him regularly, makes his sandwiches for him, and pours his beer into a glass for him. It's not clear if he's suffering from dementia or if he's just a bit of a curmudgeon but clearly the relationship is challenging.
Gerry's face lights up though when he receives a visit from his granddaughter Jessica (Chantelle Alle). Jessica's a bright girl and a king girl. She's a singer-songwriter - and she's not a bad one either. Her presence would be enough to make anyone smile and certainly Ian and Emma are both incredibly proud of her.
Her boyfriend Adam (Jack Holden) instead, probably because of his own insecurities, chooses to put her down, belittle her, and gaslight her. You can't wait for her to leave him and when she meets friendly cafe worker Mark (Miles Barrow) she senses her chance to escape Adam and spend time with someone nicer. Mark is clearly enamoured of Jessica but are her feelings mutual?
As with so many things on Marriage, we never really get to find out. This is a slice of life drama and Golaszewski is unwilling to tie up any loose ends for narrative convenience. That doesn't make it a bad watch. Though it's so slow moving that my dad gave up after one episode ("that's an hour of my life I won't get back"), I found that persevering paid dividends.
Some of the office scenes have the silence, the noisy silence, of a Wetherspoons pub or an episode of The Office. But whereas The Office is punctuated by a cruel and cringe inducing humour, Marriage is marked out in tense episodes. We see Ian and Emma visit a grave and we realise that though home is where the love is, home can also be a place of absence and loss.
Marriage shows how terribly we struggle to articulate our feelings even, especially, to those we are closest to. How sometimes we prefer to tell those people the lies they want to hear rather than the truth we want to speak and how even in the most tragic of circumstances, even in death, we simply purse our lips and carry on working, smiling, brewing tea, and making small talk.
We can't bear to lose those closest to us and neither can we bear to hurt them. To hurt someone you love is to hurt yourself and we don't want that either. Though Marriage contains some of the most accurate takes on the generation gap I have seen on television, it is even more ruthlessly affecting when it concentrates solely on the gaps in the loving relationship between Ian and Emma.
I had some provisos about Marriage (I wasn't totally sure about the theme tune - Caroline Shaw's Partita For 8 Voices:No 1, Allemande - and some of the characters that Ian met during his search for work were a little crudely drawn) but overall I was very impressed by it.
Despite all the things left unsaid, all the questions unanswered, Marriage was a powerful, deep, and moving meditation on grief, ageing, jealousy, status, love, and companionship. So many dramas focus on people having affairs, people on dating apps, and people embarking on new relationships. It felt groundbreaking, and timely, to see one that looked at people who, despite it all, managed to stay together and managed to stay in love. Must be all that toast.
No comments:
Post a Comment