Coming clean about a soap

Press, 2 November 1984, Page 11

Coming clean about a soap

Here is an admission. Your normally toughminded reviewer has had a lapse of quality control and has been sucked in by a soap. A mixed metaphor of this order shows just how significant a lapse it is. The only possible excuse, to mix another metaphor or two, is that it is an upmarket soap, subtle and amusing enough to make one’s judgment a bit slippery. The programme is "Skin Deep,” and there are only four more episodes (from six) to go, so it is not as bad as being caught forever in the struggle for survival between the denizens of “Coronation Street.” It is probably contrast that has caused it. After 90 minutes of London accents and irrepressibility from Terry and Arthur in “Minder” and Vince in “Just Good Friends,” the dreadful burr of Glasgow on Monday at 10

is somehow beguiling. The characters in “Skin Deep” become quite animated when they speak; at least their lips move. At. rest though their faces are. like chunks of granite — craggy and grey. Perhaps it is the climate. Anyway, this dour, rough-hewn appearance is in sharp contrast to the slightly puffy (puffy, not poufy) hint of self-indul-gence in the faces of London.

“Skin Deep” is about two sisters and their families who are almost at opposite ends of the Glasgow social spectrum. One rattles about unconcernedly in a cramped muddle and the other seems to fill and threaten to burst out of a massively selfcentred space. The first has a head full of ideas, people and doubts and the second is consumed with property and Eossessions and seems unurdened by hesitation over

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Ken Strongman

anything. Even better is their father, who is marvellously true to life — a real tough, old, self-educated, stirring, Clydeside dissident He stands a little to the Left of Trostky and to him the state of the world is always more, important than the disposition of his pipe ash. To return to the sisters, Jean, the one in the poor muddle, lets the housework go (rightfully) to perdition in favour of poetry. The other, Moira, who has everything and teaches trainee teachers, misplaces all her ideas within the folds of her loose-covers.

In the midst of beating us over the head with these comparisons and contrasts, Julia Jones, the writer of “Skin Deep,” is very good at the generation gap. There, were two good- moments this week. Jean (muddly, poor) takes her nephew (son of uptight Moira) to a teashop where they gorge cream cakes and discuss life. Her summary is that she has never known what she wants, which is a delightfully youthful comment for a middle-aged aunt to make to her nephew. Better still was a scene in which Jean and her husband (played with a tender whimsy by Brian Pringle) discuss their earlier years. Their daughters look on with supreme indifference until Jean, in her otherworldly way, says, "I had to get married.” Suddenly, they were on the edge of their seats, although she did

not mean what they thought she meant It was a good moment

So, there I am, caught up in it It is best to come clean and just admit it “Skin Deep” does not have the power of the “Black Stuff?’ but it is ouietly compelling. I want Jean to find out what she wants and to get it And I want Moira, who is fractionally less likeable than Colonel Gadaffi, to find something she doesn’t want and not to be able to be rid of it

One final point on another matter entirely. I have just worked out that to my certain knowledge, that singular, old-fashioned advertisement which speaks in an improbably suggestive way of “the connection between your two prized assets” has been running for at least six years. TVNZ should perhaps be awarded something for allowing this.