The Cutprice Guignol

Let me make one thing very clear: I would not be the woman I am today without Victoria Wood.

I grew up listening to British comedian Victoria Wood’s iconic radio show as a kid; I know every word to Let’s Do It, and will whack out a full performance at the barest hint of encouragement. Acorn Antiques quotes are practically a second language in my family, and I can firmly and proudly say that I have never once starved a girl of a palava. Her idiosyncratic playfulness with language and music and rhythm and her near-unparalleled ability to deliver on an innuendo are a shot of pure joy straight into the gooey pleasure centres of my brain, and they have been for the better part of the last thirty years of my life.

Which brings me to dinnerladies, the 1999-2000 sitcom developed by and starring Wood as one of a crew of the titular Women of the Eye-Searing Tabard. In her outrageously illustrious career, this might be my personal highlight, a pretty-much-perfect distillation of her unbearably witty writing and incisive observational comedy, delivered by a cast of the finest British actresses ever assembled under one roof, and sprinkled with hefty dose of pathos that’s only left its reputation to grow in the years since it came out. Victoria Woods herself stars as Bren, the impossibly charming main character who’s still one of my dream fictional dinner party guests (I promise she wouldn’t just be slinging the chips, either) and one half of perhaps my favourite sitcom romances ever, the other being Andrew Dunn as Tony.

And perhaps one of the things that defines it as such an iconic part of Woods’ career is Julie Walters as Bren’s histrionic, flamboyant, and utterly foul mother, Petula – a sort of Malcolm Tucker-esque character who’s so enormous and so brilliant that she can only appear in an average of forty seconds an episode at risk of upending the whole thing. Walters and Wood worked together so much over the course of their respective careers, but this might be my favourite collaboration of the lot, because of just how brilliantly Petula serves as a foil to Woods’ Bren.

Like all great villains (which is exactly what Petula is, make no mistake), Petula is the kind of character who, by the very virtue of her existence, helps us understand our protagonist even more clearly. Bren’s sweetness and self-effacing nature takes on a note of tragedy when you put it against Petula’s monstrous whirlwind of self-obsession; her inability to put herself first has been instilled in her by a woman who has only treated her as useful when she’s indulging her flights of fantasy. For as brilliant and hysterical as Walters is as Petula (and she is), the edge of melancholy she brings to Bren is what makes her perhaps my favourite of Woods and Walters’ collaborative efforts.

Anyway, I know I’m about twenty-five years late talking about dinnerladies, but I just felt the need to put it in writing how much I bloody adore this show. Drop your favourite innuendo in the comments (“where’s my Clint?” never fails to make me screech, personally) and let’s get to unpacking the wholemeal torpedoes, shall we?

(header image via Imdb)