TV REVIEW: The Village - Episode Six

Last week, in my review of the penultimate episode of The Village, I wrote that it had begun to seem like the show was going somewhere, that there was a point to the endless misery and bleak outlook. Fortunately, it seems I was right to have faith.

Having jumped forward in time, the final episode is set in what is now 1920. War is over, and the villagers are dealing with the aftermath, discussing the building of a memorial to their dead. Naturally, this leads to several disagreements, namely whether or not to include Joe Middleton’s name, as his ill-timed shell shock meant he was shot at dawn for cowardice. Bert (Alfie Stewart) now a teenager, has continued in the role of photographer entrusted to him by teacher Gerard Eyre (Matt Stokoe). Happily, the latter has returned to the village having been imprisoned rather than executed for refusing enlistment, although his psychological state has been considerably damaged by the experience.

Meanwhile, Lady Clem (Juliet Stevenson), continuing to go from strength to strength, stands against creepy Doctor Wylie (Jonny Phillips) and his intentions with Caro (Emily Beecham) and Grace (Maxine Peake) makes her views clear on Joe’s exclusion, as well as on grief as a collective consciousness at a village meeting.  Poor George (Augustus Prew), my favourite, considerably more subdued after his time at war, is later dumped by goody-two shoes Martha (Charlie Murphy), who admits she does not love him, having always been in love with Joe. Needless to say I shouted at the screen at that point. Finally, a bout of influenza, leading to quarantine, does nothing to lift spirits, and leads the memorial service in jeopardy.

Fantastically well-paced and carried out with a hefty helping of class, this series finale certainly packed one hell of an emotional punch. Thrilled as we were (well, I certainly was) that Mr Eyre returned safely to the village, we were no sooner allowed to enjoy this than we had to endure his being humiliated by weedy, hateful fellow teacher Crispin Ingham (Stephen Walters) in the classroom. It was also difficult to work out why Eyre had escaped with a prison sentence for being a shirker where poor Joe Middleton, having already given years of his life to the war effort, was executed for refusing to return. This certainly goes some of the way to explaining why the reformed John Middleton (John Simm) is so hostile towards Eyre. There were, however, several touching moments between father and his sons, both dead and living, as the family come to terms with Joe’s death, and John notices that Bert has photos of the entire village, apart from his father.

The real highlights of the episode though, well and truly belonged to Lady Clem and Grace- clever parallels having been drawn between the two all series. As one lost her husband to suicide, and the other to religious fanaticism, both grew steadily stronger, tougher and far happier to express their opinions. This came to a head in the finale, with the revelation, for both, that they share a grandchild, as Joe was the father of Caro’s baby. Maxine Peake was fantastic as the grieving Grace, embittered and betrayed by the state whilst still desperately fighting for her rights as a working woman. The town meeting scene, in particular, saw Peake excel. Juliet Stevenson’s Lady Clem had some absolutely corking lines which not only showed the intensity of her character developed, but summed up the mood of the hour perfectly. The poignant ‘Time to change’, when choosing a different dress stood out in particular.

This was a classy, beautifully produced end to what has been, at times, rather a hard going series to watch. This last hour of brilliantly well-executed television made it oh so very worth it.

I do hope it returns for a second series, so it can do such a fabulous job of making us miserable all over again.

Jen

Follow @AssortedBuffery on Twitter
Or like our Facebook page.

You can read my own blog here or follow me on twitter here

TV REVIEW: The Village - Episode Five

Once again, it seems that times have not improved for the residents of The Village. But then you weren’t really expecting them to, were you? On the plus side, however, it can perhaps be said that the point of this laugh a minute chuckle fest (and the Sarcasm of the Week Award goes to…) is now slowly becoming apparent.

Episode 5 saw the shell-shocked Joe Middleton (Nico Mirallegro), clearly suffering terribly from post-traumatic stress syndrome, reach the end of his latest period of leave. Knowing he must go back to the front line, he struggles to hide his distress from his family, in actual fact breaking down before making it over the borders of the farm. Collapsing in a heap in the middle of a field, he is helped back home in no fit state to return to duty. Naturally, the terrifying red-capped military police have other ideas, meaning harrowing consequences for Joe, and distressing viewing for us. Meanwhile, young Bert (Bill Jones), blaming himself for the mental state of his older brother, runs off into the night, injuring himself in the process. Grace (Maxine Peake) meets with union leaders in an attempt to secure better working conditions for the factory women, Martha (Charlie Murphy) continues her flawless performance in the role of irritating busybody and John (John Simm) continues to do little with his time but pray.

Unsurprisingly, all is not well up at the Allingham household, either. The family, still reeling from the suicide of its patriarch, must continue with business as usual. Business as usual, however, means shady dealings for Edmund (Rupert Evans), as his employment of Detective Bairstow (Joe Armstrong) as a spy grows complicated, dredging up the private life of Arnold Hankin (Anthony Flanagan) in the process. As it were. Caro (Emily Beecham) is still lost to the spell of Britain’s creepiest and most unprofessional psychiatrist, Wylie (Jonny Phillips), with even her mother, Clem (Juliet Stevenson) beginning to show her suspicions. Poor, poor George (Augustus Prew), ever the Assorted Buffery favourite, is now also a soldier, thanks to good old Wylie, and is distraught that he wasn’t able to come home sooner after the death of his father, but he did not wish to desert his men. God love him.

The horror of war was the key theme this week, with Caro and Grace’s storylines very much taking a back seat. Nico Mirallegro was outstanding as the traumatised Joe, and even Augustus Prew’s George (aww) carried with him a quiet, frightened dignity- a chilling contrast to his pre-war personality, and an excellent device for highlighting the sheer extremity of Joe’s own condition. Two female performances also shone through this week, and they belong to Maxine Peake and Juliet Stevenson. The former’s anger at God, the world and specifically Martha at the suggestion that Joe’s illness was somehow God’s will, and that she herself had no part in the saving of her husband from alcoholism was perfectly judged, and showed a far tougher, almost more admirable side to Grace’s character, as did her stunning response to the military police. She’s gone from downtrodden alcoholic’s wife to campaigning, self-confident superwoman in just five short episodes. She looks good on it, too. Not that it will get her anywhere in this village. 

 The same for Juliet Stevenson’s Lady Clem. Suddenly much more assertive, not just in name only but in her own opinions, we saw her make jokes over dinner about impotence and her husband’s suicide. To the outside observer she’d lost the plot. However, as she said herself, things can’t get any worse, and ‘that, in itself, is a form of freedom’.

These words actually sum up rather nicely how I’ve come to feel about The Village as a whole. Expect the worst, and not only will you never be shocked, but you can step back and appreciate the show for what it is. It’s been a sharp, if bleak, human condition commentary, highlighting the terrible effects of war, poverty and contemporary attitudes upon peoples’ lives. It hasn’t been a cheerful ride, but it’s been a profound one.

I’m looking forward to the final episode next week, half because of a genuine desire to watch it, and half out of sheer delight that this televisual ordeal is coming to a close.

Although I dread to think what the writers are going to throw at us for the big finale.

The Village is next on tomorrow night, 9pm, BBC One.

Jen

You can read my own blog here or follow me on twitter here

TV REVIEW: The Village - Episode Four

 Apologies for the slight delay in posting this review. However, as is often the case with The Village, I’ve only just managed to pull myself out from the depths of misery and despair long enough to have the energy to type.

I’ve made no bones so far about the fact I find the show rather misery ridden, but this week took matters about seventeen steps further. Mary, the daughter of John (John Simm) and Grace’s (Maxine Peake) develops scarlet fever, a terrifying and life threatening disease at the time, especially for such a small child. Margaret (Annabelle Apsion), the mother of a soldier killed in battle receives unfair hostility from certain village members regarding her inability to accept the circumstances of her son’s death.  Meanwhile John is, we suspect, wrongfully imprisoned for fatally injuring a cow when ‘borrowing’ medicine kept in the big house’s cowshed, leaving Assorted Buffery favourite, George (Augustus Prew) very upset about the cow, and Grace very upset about John. Understandably.  All this whilst their young son Bert Bert (Bill Jones), paralysed with fear about elder brother Joe (Nico Mirallegro) 's fate in a rumoured battle, determines to win the annual village wheelbarrow race in a bizarre yet sweet attempt to somehow keep his brother safe.

None of these storylines, however, felt like contenders for the episode’s main focal point, as this accolade undoubtedly went to the plight of Caro Allingham (Emily Beecham). Having had her child taken away from her to protect the family reputation, poor Caro is now being treated for hysterics- that uniquely ‘female’ disease seen at the time as simply a combination of attention seeking, self- pity and a lack of appropriate response to male authority. Or that’s how her doctor, Doctor Wylie (Jonny Phillips) describes it, anyway. Making the family hand full authority over to him, Wylie decrees that Caro be bed bound, allowed to do nothing but simply lie there unless he says otherwise, forbidden from talking to anyone and being fed a mixture of veal and milk seven times a day, finishing all of it without fail. This results in a truly harrowing scene in which the distraught woman is force fed through a tube, with Wylie seeming to enjoy breaking her spirit just a little too much, particularly relishing informing the haplessly well-intentioned George that it was his poetry about his sister’s diet which revealed to the doctor that she had been talking to him. 

This enjoyment seemed particularly, disturbingly apparent in what looked to be a scene of suggested rape, with Wylie seen locking the door and unbuckling his belt, whilst the broken Caro looked on in a terrifying, apathetic sort of fear. We do not know this for sure as yet, but given the echo in the episode’s other sexually brutal scenes involving Detective Bairstow (Joe Armstrong) – another male authority figure, and that this is The Village, a show where everything is every bit as nasty as it appears – it certainly seems likely.

The show’s commitment to a lack of sentimentality towards life in the time of its setting 

is certainly to be admired, particularly as we live in a world in which we’re frequently encouraged to look back through the nostalgic lens of ‘things were better, back then’. Well no, says The Village, they weren’t. Young men were sent to war, we had fewer cures for diseases, families and older men had absolute authority over vulnerable young women and lower class people had to face the wall when passed in the street by one of their betters. Oh and there were a lot of grey skies and mud. Admirable, in concept though this is, it doesn’t half make for a bleak hour of television. I’m all for Naturalism, and think the show has taken a good deal of inspiration from the likes of Emile Zola, ‘Germinal’, in particular, however I’m no longer convinced that the relentless misery, without much of a let-up, ever, is especially realistic.

Surely things weren’t this bad, all the time back then? Perhaps they were, perhaps they weren’t. Either way, we’ll find out soon enough in the next episode.

The Village is next on tonight, BBC One, 9pm.

  Jen

You can read my own blog here or follow me on twitter here


http://www.facebook.com/AssortedBuffery
@AssortedBuffery

TV REVIEW: The Village - Episode Three

For approximately 30 seconds this week I thought I was going to have to eat my words about The Village. It seemed, for a good quarter of the show at least, that things might be about to get a little happier.

Now the proud owners of several cows (Lord only knows how), John Middleton (John Simm) and his young son Bert (Bill Jones) work the farm together, with Bert taking the milk down to the station on a cart pulled by a pony they have somehow procured. John, presumably having had a personality transplant, is teaching his son how to box, even encouraging him to use his prohibited left hand, whilst Grace (Maxine Peake) has a job down at a local factory. Joe (Nico Mirallegro) has also returned home on leave, which is nice for him, Caro Allingham (Emily Beecham) seems to have happily replaced Baby the dog with an actual baby, and George Allingham (Augustus Prew) and Martha Lane (Charlie Murphy) are having a lovely time tramping across the Peak District vaguely flirting.

So much happiness could never last though, and certainly not in this village. Grace’s tardiness lands her in trouble at work, Joe has no time for Caro and her mooning about, Lady Clem (Juliet Stevenson) plots against her own daughter, and indeed just about everyone, George is desperate to prove his worth to Martha, the cows ruin their milk by inadvertently eating garlic, we hear of a local tragedy from the front line oh and soldiers want to take the Middleton’s horse off to war with them. No one in The Village has it worse this week, however, than Gerard Eyre (Matt Stokoe), a conscientious objector and teacher at the local school. Making clear his refusal to set aside his views and be sent off to war with the introduction of conscription for the first time in British history, he was always going to be in for a rough, even tragic, ride.

Stokoe gives a heart breaking performance as the strong willed, well-meaning teacher, particularly during his refusal to put on uniform to face tribunal. Bill Jones also gives his best performance of the series so far as the Young Bert, conveying the child’s desperate panic at the plight of his ally and hero. Powerful performances were also provided this week by the returning Nico Mirallegro as Joe, the lad about town suddenly faced with unimaginable horror and terror, trying to keep it together whilst on leave for the sake of his little brother, as well as Emily Beecham’s Caro, a young woman in a situation she never expected to find herself in, rejected and judged by her own family.

Desperate as I am to end this review on a cheerful note, I am pleased to report the happier news that John Middleton appears to have developed a sense of humour, and that Martha Lane is marginally less useless than she was previously, sticking up for Grace as well as herself. Maybe things aren’t so bad after all? I’m joking of course, they are, but it’s shaping up to me nigh on un-missable Sunday night viewing regardless.

- Jen

You can read my own blog here or follow me on twitter here


http://www.facebook.com/AssortedBuffery
@AssortedBuffery