I Can Hear The Art Beating As One:Grayson's Art Club S2.

The first series of Grayson's Art Club (Channel 4), shown during the early months of last year's first lockdown, was an absolute tonic. Empathetic, emotional, kind, creative, and funny. This year's lockdown may have been tougher, colder, more divisive, and, at least seemingly, longer but the second series of Grayson's Art Club, thankfully, just ploughed on in the same vein as the first - and it was all the better for it.

Who even thought 'this' would last so long we'd get a second series? But over six episodes, devoted to the themes of family, nature, food, dreams, work, and travel, Grayson and his wife, now co-presenter, Philippa, along with Kevin the Cat and, of course, Alan Measles showed that the diverse population of Britain is curious, talented, and creative - and that behind the most prosaic facades there are often extraordinary and moving stories to be told.

Take, for instance, the occasion Grayson gently encourages a gay guy who'd always dreamed of being, but never quite had the confidence, a drag queen to go for it. Which he does - on national television. Or the incredibly touching scenes of Becky Lou Tyler, aka EyeGazeGirl, whose disability means she needs help with many aspects of her life but, using her eyes and computer, can, and does, make art independently.

Throughout the series, Grayson has a cry, Philippa has a cry, and I, of course, have a cry. I never thought the old 'Edward Woodward' joke would ever get me like that. It's these little moments that eclipse all the, admittedly wonderful, historical art that Grayson uses to tell his stories. There are works on show by artists as varied as Turner, Manet, Henri Rousseau, Marina Abramovic, Banksy, Maria Nepomuceno, Andy Goldsworthy, and Felix Gonzales Torres alongside thirty thousand year old French cave paintings and Chola bronzes from southern India.

Van Gogh, Hogarth, Vermeer, and Paul Delvaux rub shoulders with Edgar Degas, Paul Klee, Claes Oldenberg, Andreas Gursky, Frank Bowling, and Bruegel the Elder against a background of Javanese batik sarongs and the Mappa Mundi in Hereford Cathedral. It is, I think, the fact that Grayson and Philippa Perry seem to be interested in absolutely everything and everyone that gives them their warmth, their humanity, and even the knowledge they use so kindly.

Curiosity is a wonderfully powerful tool to aid learning and we witness this in the interviews with the large numbers of celebrity guests and artists that appear on series two of Grayson's Art Club. Boy George talks about his 'disco family' and how he'd never eaten prawns or courgettes until he'd left home, Harry Hill hugs trees in a diamond knit tank top, and, movingly, Lianne La Havas creates a lovely drawing of her bus driver father who has continued working throughout the pandemic without complaint.

There are chats with Derren Brown, Alex Horne, Ryan Gander, Anneka Rice, Rose Wylie, Nigella Lawson, Sophie Ellis-Bextor, Konnie Huq, Tom Allen, and Johnny Vegas and there's Sue Perkins making a crochet burger and there's Mawaan Rizwan painting his favourite fried chicken shop - the hilariously named Favourable Fried Chicken. 

David Bailey laughs infectiously as he talks about Mick Jagger and photographs Grayson Perry, Yinka Ilori shows off his collection of beautiful colourful chairs (they'd have made excellent furniture in his Palace of Colour in Dulwich two summers ago), and Russell Tovey remembers being equally inspired by the Warner Brothers shop in Lakeside shopping centre in Essex as he was by Keith Haring.

All the celebrity chats are great but when Grayson chats to the great British public it is when the show is at its best. There's Mark Gee and his canary Priscilla (who he even dresses up as), Holly Walsh talking about pom-poms and pollarded trees, and making tapestries, there's ex-copper and former Skeptics in the Pub speaker Stevyn Colgan's 'monsters', and there's paintings and drawings of Space Raiders, astronauts roller skating on the moon, of packed pubs, of romantic hand holding with a living barcode, of ice cream vans, of people working in supermarkets, and of a pile of dishes on a draining board that look like the Sydney Opera House.

Tyler Baker's BP petrol station at night is worthy of Eds Hopper and Ruscha, Kate Chadwick's vegan sausage butty looks nice enough to eat even if the knitted fry ups and Nick Jones's coronavirus lollipops don't (and aren't supposed to). All this art is testament to the imagination and the creativity of the British people and, as I wrote about the last series, it shows "the very best of British. A modest and gentle creativity so different to the bellicose exceptionalism that often rallies round the flag".

There are paeans to lost siblings, lost friends, and lost parents and there are people who approach their art in ways I'd never have thought of. Polly Morgan makes art from the skins of snakes that have died of natural causes (she keeps their corpses in a freezer in her basement, occasionally alongside her food) and Suzanne Bull's New Trainers is a collection of her families favourite smells sealed in jam jars.

 

There's strawberry, chocolate, lavender, the titular new trainers, and even Lynx deoderant although poor Suzanne was unable to enjoy these smells to reminder her of her family because she caught Covid. It's good to see her recovered, and able to laugh about it, now. Another story with a happy ending comes when Grayson interviews Amelia Mullins.

Mullins describes a condition she suffers with which has caused her to undergo a premature menopause that has denied her the chance of biological motherhood. She calls the embroidery she has made to help her understand both that condition, and the Covid experience, her 'comfort blanket'. An equally moving story comes from Sally-Ann, a doctor whose colleague Colin passed away during the first year of the Covid outbreak.

Colin had always passed sweets out to his colleagues, mostly sherbet lemons, so she's made a big painting of a sherbet lemon for them all to remember him by. It's these small, but deep, celebrations of friendship and love that make the series such a sweet, and sometimes bittersweet, experience. Perry celebrates the NHS, he celebrates immigration, and he celebrates art, love, and life. When he tells his guests their works have been chosen for the eventual exhibition, "when this is all over", they look, without exception, over the moon.

Some even cry. The footage is linked together by music and it surely can't be a coincidence that much of it (Bill Withers, The Stranglers, and Psychic TV) features musicians that passed away last year. Nothing is even said about that but Grayson Perry, despite clearly being an articulate and intelligent man, wears his knowledge lightly.

The home he shares with Philippa, Kevin, and Measles looks big, and it's in Islington so probably cost a few bob, but it also looks homely, even messy at times as would befit their professions. They call each other Philbert and Graybo, at one point Philippa calls him "old smelly mountain bike trousers", and he even refers to his lunch as "lunchington".

It could be icky or twee but it comes across as something quite different. Two people with genuine affection for each other and for everyone else they come into contact with. Grayson Perry makes his own art as the series progresses, "Deliveroo riders for the after life" and, most impressively of all, an intentionally rusted cast iron model car to mark "the end of the age of oil" which just happens to be a perfect fit for Alan Measles.

At a time when we're not allowed to touch most of the people we love, it feels even more special to be touched by beautiful art, stories of love and hope, and moving television and Grayson's Art Club, for the second time, has certainly not failed in that but it keeps, perhaps, its biggest surprise back until the last few minutes of the final show. 

News of a new life brings tears of joy at the best of times and, lockdown or not, that's no different. When one of Grayson's guests introduces a baby to the screen you can't help but be moved and you can't help but wish that baby grows up in a world where there are more people like Grayson and Philippa Perry and all their wonderful guests in than not. That they grow up in the world that Grayson's Art Club reflects. A world of empathy, creativity, laughter, and kindness.