One man’s crisis, another man’s ...

Press, 7 April 1987, Page 23

One man’s crisis, another man’s ...

It had to happen sometime — an upper-middle-class, nouveau riche soap, set in the British yachting world where women bray and men boom. The voices are so brittle with the neurotic stress of keeping up with the Smythe-Joneses that they can shatter jeroboams at 10 paces. Even though the bulk of the population will find it hard to sympathise with the characters, “Howards’ Way” will be popular. The series will be saved because Tom Howard is played by Maurice Colbourne. He might be an aircraft designer and amateur yacht racer, but there is still gravel in his voice and a flicker of fire in his belly. He was, after all, the hardest of the lot in the brilliant “Gangsters” a few years ago. His wife, played by Jan Harvey, has all of the unthinking conservative pretentions and repressed sexuality of her kind, at least as the stereotypes have it. For scene-setting, the

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first episode began just as it should have. Tom and his teen-age children won the Commodore’s Cup, with a bit of clever racing — he took a last-minute chance, the hint of things to come. Then it was celebration drinkies at the club, back home to a dinner with

champers, with everyone saying “ears” to indicate their continued wakefulness. Then, and only then, did he tell them he had been given the golden fingers of redundancy from his design job. Shock, horror. “What about university, Dad? What about my year off, Dad?” Thus the children. Meanwhile his wife was bitching- because he did not tell her sooner and when he did it was in front of the children. Then she came as near to her senses as her world permits. “Tom, what exactly does it mean?” But she was soon moaning at the children for not having had the courtesy, good grace, thoughtfulness and general sensitivity to load the dishwasher. Interleaved with these body blows, the local boat-builder was about to have his loans foreclosed by the bank. He is a salt of the earth, as well as the sea, and must be a good man since boats (wooden, not plastic) rather than money are his love. His daughter Avril is

back from London after something disastrous, to help him run his business. That she and Tom will become, let us say,, soulmates, is absolutely certain, and there could be a bit of body in there as well. So, as well as lifting the lid off a bit of the world which for once does not involve doctors and nurses, “Howards’ Way” is also about the mid-life crisis. This is one of those awkward conditions which may well be a manifestation of the present generation or may simply have never been spoken of by our forbears. Perhaps life used to be one long crisis. By the end of the first episode, it had become quite clear that Tom was going to take a chance and strike out on his. own, or at least in cahoots with the boat-builder. His wife, though, was going hell-for-leather to. preserve life as she knows it. “We must know someone who can pull strings.” She does, but Tom rejects the possibility of commuting two hours

to London to sit in an office and design airports. Obviously he doesn’t know which side his cake is buttered on. And by the look of his wife, he could be facing life without his oats as well. The first hour of “Howards’ Way” was done well enough to sink its hooks in. The middie-class neuroticism. was well contrived and there are not too many sequences of people gazing into their own souls. It is a genuine soap, making one want to know what becomes of them all. Will Tom make out, will his wife and children be better or worse for their ordeal? Mind you, the mortgage Is paid off and they do have an enormous house and garden, boat and Jag. No, no, must be fair, a midlife crisis can descend on anyone.. Tailpiece. For sheer tacky bad taste, the new Coke “I am the future of the world,” American-children-in-church advertisement has reached new depths.