There are few outright belly laughs in Dawn French’s Can You Keep A Secret? (BBC One, 9.30pm) – but this dry comedy about an older couple who commit insurance fraud has a quiet charm that compensates for the lack of riotous gags.
French and Mark Heap are Debbie and William Fendon, husband and wife in a village in England’s West Country, who decide to cash in when William is wrongly declared dead by their hypochondriac GP (she has never been herself since Covid). This bags them a £250,000 insurance jackpot, with the only downside being that they have to pretend William really is dead.
That’s all right, says Debbie. He hardly leaves the house anyway and doesn’t know any of their neighbours. The only challenge is convincing their perpetually frazzled son Harry (Craig Roberts) to go along with the plan – though first they have to gently deliver the bombshell that his dad is alive after all.
This is tricky for Harry. Not only must he readjust to the reality that his dead father is actually shuffling around in his dressing gown and munching biscuits in the cupboard – he is also under strict instruction not to share this information with his wife, Neha (Mandip Gill), a police officer and stickler for following procedure.
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There is a bittersweet undertow to Can You Keep A Secret? William has Parkinson’s – when Debbie found him catatonic and seemingly expired, he had in fact accidentally taken a double dose of his medication. The series also critiques the medical profession and insurance industry, each happy to tick off William’s death as just another statistic, without bothering to look further.
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The show’s writer, Simon Mayhew-Archer, has explained that the Parkinson’s storyline draws on his own experiences as the son of an affected person. “It’s a strange thing to have in a comedy,” he told the Radio Times. “But it’s not the main thing. It’s incidental. I suppose, comedically, the good thing about it is that William does use [his illness] for emotional blackmail.”
British comedy can be hit or miss – French’s own Vicar of Dibley relied on social conventions that didn’t always land with many Irish viewers. What was the big joke, exactly? But she and Heap are great in this understated chortle onslaught, as is Roberts as the overwhelmed Harry.
There are occasional misjudgments – too many flatulence gags, and a bit about William going to the bathroom in the cupboard while hiding from Debbie’s widow support group is unpleasant rather than funny. But Can You Keep A Secret? has an assured tone – funny in its own understated way, yet dry as sandpaper – and there are much worse ways to start the new year.
