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EveryoneÕs talking about...
This Life (well, in the US they are)
By Rupert Smith
Guardian Unlimited
Sunday January 24, 1999
What must they think of us?
When BBC2's lawyers-in-love drama This Life made its
début in America last November, TV commentators
went into a spin over the show's 'frankness' about matters
sexual and chemical (they didn't complain about the swearing,
thanks to a judicious bleeping of the more robust Anglo-Saxon
vocabulary). The most their British counterparts could
manage when the show began back in 1996 was a chilly
tut-tut about the shaky camerawork.
Several weeks later, This
Life is making serious inroads into the hipper fringes
of the US TV audience, thanks to the efforts of BBC America,
the transatlantic arm of the BBC Choice cable operation.
The reach may only have been around five million households,
but they were certainly the right households: acres of
press coverage have guaranteed This Life a bigger audience
next time round.
Much of that acreage has been
spent in an attempt to define what exactly This Life
is like - 'Sort of like Melrose Place'; 'a younger, hipper
version of thirtysomething'; 'MTV's The Real World shot
by the producers of NYPD Blue'; 'a cross between Friends
and Ally McBeal' and so on. As the series drew to an
end, the New York Times decided that This Life was really
like nothing else on American TV, devoted a whole page
and colour pic to the phenomenon and loudly demanded
more.
It's unlikely - in fact, impossible
- that This Life will ever be a big mainstream hit in
post-Monica America: the freewheeling attitude to sex
and drugs means that none of the networks will touch
it with a bargepole. But for those in the know, it's
a breath of fresh air. 'I suppose I should be offended,'
said the Baltimore Sun critic, 'but I'm not. In fact,
I'm hooked on their lives like none other on American
TV save the gang at Homicide.'
The other obstacle in This
Life's way is its Englishness. The Chattanooga Times
complained about 'thick accents and British slang', while
the San Francisco Examiner printed a helpful (and to
these eyes, hilarious) guide to This Life-speak. '"Kip''
is a place to sleep, "cottaging" means cruising for gay
sex... and "git" an annoying, unpleasant person. So now
we know.'
One thing's for certain, American
casting directors must have their eyes glued to the screen.
Jack Davenport and Andrew
Lincoln are tailored for Hollywood:
handsome, unafraid of nudity and with cute Brit accents
to boot. Daniela Nardini, surely, could play some kind
of deranged, cigarette-smoking bisexual killer hunted
by a crusading cop (Kevin Costner, perhaps), while Amita
Dhiri could break down elegantly in the next Ang Lee
movie. Perhaps they could share a house together somewhere
in Beverly Hills.
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