10 May 2013

There are times when Vicious makes Are You Being Served? seem almost nuanced

Reviewed: Vicious.

Vicious
ITV

Vicious (Mondays, 9pm) is a new, muchplugged sitcom about two hammy old queens played by Ian McKellen and Derek Jacobi. It’s written by Gary Janetti, late of Will & Grace, and the playwright Mark Ravenhill and I would really love to know what Peter Tatchell makes of it. On the one hand, how amazing that ITV has made a prime-time sitcom about two blokes who have been in love for 48 years. On the other, would the channel have commissioned a pair of straight men to write this kind of hackneyed, stereotyped drivel? And would two leading gay actors have agreed to star in it if they had? In 1973, they certainly would have. But in 2013? I think not. Affectionate though it is – all hail the adorable, ageing poofs, with their flapping hands and their superannuated phraseology! – there are times when Vicious makes Are You Being Served? seem almost nuanced.

If I’m honest, though, it isn’t the characters of Freddie (McKellen) and Stuart (Jacobi) who make my blood boil, for all that Stuart in particular is cut from the same cloth as Mr Humphries (I was so amazed/appalled by episode one of Vicious that I watched a preview of episode two, in which, in a kind of homage to Humphries, Stuart even lands a job working in the menswear department of a large store). I like a decent luvvie joke as much as the next person and Freddie, voted by fans the tenth most popular baddie in an episode of Doctor Who, has a good if somewhat predictable line in those.

No, it is their friend Violet (Frances de la Tour), a deluded and desperate fag hag, who really bothers me. If Freddie and Stuart, with their tired gags about mascara and Leytonstone, are there to be laughed at, Violet – “I go to yoga; I’m great fun” – exists only to be pitied. Newsflash: misogyny is not only the preserve of straight men. In Vicious, it rises off Violet like Shake’n’Vac from one of Freddie’s and Stuart’s horrible rugs.

Violet arrives at Freddie’s and Stuart’s camp and dinky flat – they keep the curtains permanently drawn, the better to hide their wrinkles, and the place is lit entirely by frilly lamps – pretty much every five minutes. “These aren’t calling hours!” cries Stuart, when the bell goes before they have even finished their morning tea.

In episode one, she pitched up just as Ash (Iwan Rheon), the hunky prospective tenant of the next-door flat, disappeared into their loo. Informed that a young stranger was using their facilities, Violet, her voice full of longing, said: “What if he comes out and rapes me?”

The dialogue then went like this:

Violet (sounding breathless but distinctly un-panicky): “I’m so frightened I’m going to be raped!”
Freddie (with venom): “For God’s sake! Nobody’s going to rape you!”
Violet (disappointed): “What an awful thing to say!”

Hilarious, eh? I do love a good rape joke, especially when delivered by some of our very finest actors in their very fruitiest voices. This scene was fairly gross, in a lazy, Roy- Chubby-Brown-meets-Uncle-Monty kind of a way, and I’m amazed it made it to the screen. Mostly, though, the problem with Vicious is that it simply isn’t funny enough. Or funny at all. In the main, the laughs are supposed to come from the calcified bitchiness that overlays Freddie’s and Stuart’s love for one another. And I can imagine a series in which this sort of thing could be hilarious. You’ve only to read (for instance) Brian Sewell’s memoirs to know that, done right, such fossilised malice can be seriously, outrageously brilliant.

But Janetti and Ravenhill seem not to have the requisite firepower. Their “jokes” are so laboured. “Who do you think you are, the Earl of Grantham?” says Stuart to Freddie, who can be rather grand, what with having played the detective in The Mousetrap for a whole year. And then, by way of a punchline: “You’re from Wigan.” I know. It’s hard to believe, isn’t it? All the hammy old queens of my acquaintance (quite a few, as it happens, for all that I don’t long to be raped by a stranger) could have come up with a line 50 times wittier than that and in less time than it takes to say “bridge roll”.