Generally, I’m a stand-up guy. I bung my change in the charity tin and I’m liberal about it. I let old women board the train ahead of me, even in rush hour. St. Peter, throw those pearly gates wide. Not even I, though, claim to have made it 21 years without the odd moral mishap. My biggest episode for self-reproach came when I was eight and glued to a Game Boy; my best friend, let’s call him Mark (wounds might still be raw, here) had left me to care for his Pokémon game whilst he went to Tenerife with his parents. For those unacquainted with the Pokémon series (what did you do with your childhoods? Outdoor activities? Get out!), the aim of the game was to capture as many creatures as possible. The most coveted was Mew, who appeared only once in each person’s game in the depths of a dark cave, and whom I myself had blunderingly let evade capture in my own. Mark, at the time, had been prodigiously compassionate for his years, vowing to let me co-train his Mew when he got a Poké Ball to it and opting not to pursue the cave-dweller until he was sure of his ability. Now for my transgression; I tailed Mew in Mark’s absence, deliberately let it escape and jealously slashed my supposed sidekick’s chance of achieving what I had not. Loathsome, aren’t I? Peter, just remember all those ladies who have had seats on me. What my pre-teen malevolence points up is the masked but heinous bitterness of friendship, the ugly tension that rears its head whenever one suit is promoted over his buddy or one playground mum goes down to a 10.
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| Got your back? Ian and Ollie take to the golf course |
In the first installment of ITV1‘s three part drama The Last Weekend, which aired on Sunday night, this tension was staggering. Indeed, it made any lingering bad-blood between Mark and I seem laughable. The series centers on longtime pals Ian (Shaun Evans) and Ollie (Rupert Penry-Jones), whose closeness violated the university social hierarchy when they met as undergraduates over a decade before; Ollie, a top-class toff with fluffy blonde hair and a whole plum tree in his mouth, went on to become a well-heeled barrister, whilst Ian landed himself a job as a primary school teacher and a clapped out car. The episode saw the now-men meeting up at Ollie’s summer digs and reigniting the hidden enmity that they’d first sparked in halls, and that Ollie had kindled when he wed the woman of Ian’s heart, Daisy (Genevieve O'Reilly). With Ian’s wife Em (Claire Keelan) along for the ride, the guys revived their triathlon tradition and wasted little time in fronting up to one another...behind each other’s backs.
By the five minute-mark, the show had smashed barriers. Literally. Throughout the episode, Ian broke the fourth wall and narrated the trip from a future, erratic point of view, taking jibes at the apparent joviality of the men’s reunion and eerily hinting at its tragic outcome. Initially, this macabre Ian looked set to be a sticking point; he was commenting on a former, sunnier version of himself, and the discrepancy between Ian-past and Ian-future lacked credibility; how could one man be so buoyant in one frame and so unhinged in the next? By the credits, though, the reconciliation between Ian’s two poles was complete; subtly, swiftly and shrewdly, we saw his cheer evaporate and his sinister side come to the fore. This was one instance of the show’s fluid use of chronology. During others, we were propelled back to the trip being arranged, plunged into Ollie’s graduation party and teased with semi-flashbacks, semi-fantasies of an increasingly unstable Ian. Format-wise, the show was bold enough to be disconcerting but smart enough to tie up any loose ends.
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| Oblivious to the tension? Daisy and Em party |
Pertinent as the plot’s premise might be to all of us who, like myself, have had a Mew-moment, it doesn’t exactly scream titillating on paper; the first episode saw the story’s arc barely getting off the ground and, for the large part, deferred the showdowns to a later date. This week, the episode’s hair-raising capability came not from high-octane drama, but instead from its being an achingly slow-burn. With Ian’s future, sinister self stalking into the shot whenever things got too upbeat and promising trauma before the weekend was up, the action seemed always tantalizingly out of reach. With its format alone keeping things sufficiently piquing, the episode even ventured to mock its own lack of bona-fide action; a knife-wielding teen in the kitchen turned out to be Ollie’s Hooray-Henry son, a table of apparently prying elderlies in the pub were actually looking over the dessert menu, and Ollie’s intoxicated driving went off without a hitch. The writers didn’t need to use up their dramatic stock just yet, when the stifling atmosphere they created had made every triviality an edge-of-your-seater.
When I watched BBC1’s three-parter Blackout, I made much of Alex Demoys’ comparative simplicity as a character when set alongside her husband’s, his mistress’ and her wayward ex’s. It was, I complained at the time, a shame that the writers’ canny ability to carve out complex characters hadn’t benefitted Alex. The Last Weekend, too, had a figure of relative one-dimensionality, this time in the shape of Ian’s wife Em. Unlike Ian’s, her happy-go-lucky attitude didn’t evaporate as she settled into the episode, and whilst Ollie and Daisy’s infuriating airs and graces quickly both rattled and awed her husband (‘Oh look Ollie- Cava!’ ‘Smashing!’), Em remained down-to-earth, ready to giggle at their friends’ snobbery and to raise eyebrows at their secrecy. Far from being drab, though, Em emerged as a sort of audience anchor as the episode wore on: a stronghold of perspective and normality that viewers found empathy for. We, like Em, were baffled and alienated by Ian, and couldn’t decide whether Daisy was a long-suffering, tragic sort of wife or a snobbish and shallow one. That’s not to say that Ollie, by default and through his being a question mark, dragged the episode down either; his outlandish behavior was complemented by Em’s stoicism rather than shown up by it.
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| Mixed-up: Ian turned dark as the show progressed |
Next Sunday, the series needs to come good on its promise of bust-ups in order to dodge stagnancy; the smell of frying bacon is all well and good, but it needs to be followed by a few butties. The second installment should have little trouble in the drama department, though, if it merely tends to the seeds its predecessor has already sowed. The arrival of Daisy’s ‘client’ Mo at the episode’s close, coupled with Ian’s now unwavering instability and his unnerving determination to bed Daisy, looks set to be particularly explosive (and cleverly intricate, too, if Ian’s resentment for him is mirrored in his maltreatment of a black schoolchild as hinted by the ‘next weeks’). Then there’s Ollie’s claim to have an ‘inoperable’ brain tumor and a recklessness to match, Daisy’s apparent need to speak to Ian on their own and the evasiveness that met Em when she teased the men’s friendship as ‘a bit gay’. Eyes on every space.
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