FIONA jilted Chris on the morning they were to be married. Chris took an overdose. "Quite a silly thing to do," said Fiona. Since Tony jilted Clare, she has taken to the Internet to flirt with strangers. Noel has jilted Debbie three times. "Ah, but he is a perfect gentleman," she says. Amanda jilted Tony (another one), changed her", mind, married him and now they're separated.
Somebody should have told Amanda, and Tony it's a good idea to cut the apron strings before you tie the knot. Cutting Edge: Jilted was a cautionary tale about the dangers of allowing families too much: say in weddings. It was telling too, that in all the jilter/jiltee uncouplings, at least one of the parties seemed desperate for a wedding, without necessarily being certain they wanted the marriage which comes attached.
Curiously, the maniacally romantic, desperate-to-wed-if-not-to-marry, partners can, at least on the evidence of this documentary, just as easily jilt as be jilted. It must be quite an insult to find yourself ditched by an intended, who has been primarily responsible for arranging a big wedding. Even attempts to explain this would inevitably be dismissed as a pathetic attempt at face-saving. After all, schadenfreude feasts on such compounded humiliations.
Why people should allow themselves be filmed for such documentaries remains a mystery. Broadcasting personal humiliation may suggest that its emotional devastation has been conquered. Alternatively, it may indicate that the jilting retains a power which demands escalating attention. Either way, we got a programme which mixed sociology with grand Oprah. There were too, elements of pitch-black humour married to the mix.
For instance, on her hen night, Fiona met "a male". Left in the lurch at the church, her fiance Chris had a wedding breakfast of barbiturates. Rushed to hospital, he was pumped and survived.. Fiona called to visit him. "She told me there was this . .. lad," said Chris. "Instead of drinking champagne, I was drinking activated charcoal out of a plastic cup. Not the best way to start, is it?" Anyway, Fiona's male/lad has gone back to his wile. Chris and Fiona are back together.
Clare fell in love with Tony while he was doing a stretch for armed robbery. "I. knew that he couldn't run away," she said. However, when they let him out for the wedding, he did. "I didn't want to live," said Clare. So, she took to the Internet, reinventing herself as the blonde siren, Demi Lee. For up to 11 hours a day, she comforted herself in the cybersleazy world of one-handed keyboard operators.
Even though she's now reunited with the elusive Tony, she still has fun on the wires. On an "Adult Entertainment and Games site, she tapped out descriptions of her lacy underwear while Tony, strictly old media, lounged on a sofa and read a newspaper. "I used to get an average of, 72 e-mails a day," said Clare., Never mind that she was conveniently equating e-mails with he-males, Clare had found that her computer was ideal for running revenge programs.
The most touching story on Jilted centred on Dorothy and Gabriel. Fifty years after Gabriel, a Frenchman, failed to show at English Dorothy's local church, she went to France to find out why. She discovered that Gabriel, a sailor who experienced severe mental illness after his ship was torpedoed during the second World War, had spent the last 26 years of his life in a mental home. He died in 1980. "I think I had a lucky escape," Dorothy said.
Camera lenses zooming up aisles, jilting and jilted brides dressing up in unused wedding dresses, small country churches in the snow - director, Russell England smothered Jilted with imagery and melancholic music. But the dominant warning, voiced by all the technique and all the talking heads, was to be suspicious about partners who become seduced by the romantic notions of a big wedding. Lovers of romance, it was clear, don't always make lovers of people.
ONE of the main lessons of Family Money is that it's wise to be suspicious of any man who works in the BBC, has a wife named Poppy and twins called Molly and Minerva. Well, you would be, wouldn't you? In this new four-part adaptation of a Nina Bawden novel, Claire Bloom plays an elderly widow, who, after being assaulted as she witnessed a murder, develops amnesia and decides that she wants to sell her very desirable family home.
But her ambitious children - daughter Izzi and son Harry (married to Poppy) - are not particularly impressed when she announces that most of the proceeds will go to her housekeeper, Ivy (June, Whitfield). In principle, of course,. they feel compelled to see a certain justice in Ivy getting the money. After all, they are, doing well financially and Ivy has given years of service.
So, we get social comedy as Harry and Izzi wrestle with their consciences over the share out of the family loot. "Well I'm not against Ivy getting it. But, in 10 years time, I don't want Ivy's horrible children to have it," says Izzi, calculatingly matter-of-fact. Harry nods understandingly. He agrees that Ivy isn't the problem but still, well, it's family money, isn't it? "And, when it comes to, nursing home time, £100,000 might, make all the difference.
Such comedy about the liberal well-to-do clashes somewhat with Family Money's thriller plot. Ms Bloom's character is, after all, the only surviving witness of a fatal beating. Even though she has lost her memory of the incident, the police are hopeful that she will yet recall vital details. Meanwhile, from a barge moored, on a canal which passes the back of her house, a young man is watching. He might be the murderer.
Combining social comedy and dark thriller elements makes this one watchable. In the wrong proportions or with the wrong tone, such opposites could cancel each other. But, so far, so good and the maintenance of the necessary balance adds edge. Part whodunnit and part comic Soap opera, Family Money asks the serious question of who precisely owns, or ought to own, such, money.
Inheritance has always been a sticky subject for egalitarians. On the one hand, why should they disadvantage themselves by refusing inherited wealth? On the other, well ... by definition, they are furthering unfairness into a new generation. Against a backdrop of moody saxophone and evocative city lights, there are awkward questions posed. Before it's over, it's likely to end in tears, as the social swipes at Harry and Izzi rain down like the blows which have rocked their mother's mind.
THERE were a number of awkward questions posed by A Little Bit Of Irish, screened to mark St Patrick's Day. Why, for instance, was Bernadette Greevy walking like a zombie and wearing a bride-of-Dracula rig-out, when Bing Crosby visited Dublin in 1966? Why does pre-Riverdance Irish dancing deem to have a new charm? Why did RTE rescreen this programme, 31 years after it was first shown?
As entertainment, this was pretty grim stuff. But, as an historical artefact, it was priceless. Bing Crosby opened the show singing Molly Malone in front of film of O'Connell Street. Back then, of course, Dublin had not risen to its eminent position of nightclub capital of Europe. The Ludlows were next up. With guitars and bainin cardigans, they epitomised the "folk boom" of the 1960s.
Milo O'Shea performed poetry like an Irish Pam Ayres on acid. It was absolutely riveting. John McNally sang I'm Off To Philadelphia and Siobhan Mc Kenna read Padraig Pearse's poems, The Fool and The Mother. Such poetry was, of course, the flavour of 1966 - the 50th anniversary of the 1916 Easter Rising., There was, perhaps, a dangerously sanctimonious feel to the reciting of these poems. But, there was too, a sense of Ireland which suggested a grander destiny than Dublin's becoming the night-club capital of Europe.
Dermot O'Brien sang and played the accordion. Alma Carroll just sang. Bing Crosby went on stage at the Abbey Theatre to reminisce about Barry Fitzgerald and sing, with a choir of schoolgirls. The Isle Of Inisfree. It was all quite sure of itself, or at least, quite sure of acceptable Irishness. But, with Bing Crosby as the dominant star, it was, in fact, a St Patrick's Day version of a Perry Como Christmas special. Patronising.
FINALLY, the wannahave street-cred yuppies of This Life returned with a hangover. Lager cans full of urine, bodies groaning in the bath and post-rumpo depression set the tone. Miles, Anna, Warren, Milly, Egg and Egg's dad, Jerry, had thrown a party. Looking at its aftermath, it was impossible not to be grateful for middle age.
It was also impossible not to think that these people look too much like Sunday supplement clones to take a proper walk on the wild side. Still, it had a few good lines. "Right, that's it," said Warren, "I'm off the booze forever. I mean it. It's drugs only from now on." How's that for a postmodern Father Mathew? And Egg, who last year tired of being a lawyer and decided to become a novelist: "I'm not angst-ridden," he tells his father in explanation of his decision to quit writing. "I'm just bored."
Or just a whinger? Certainly, this is one Egg, who's never sunny-side up. But then, his wretched companions are no jollier. Anna and Miles wake up together, and by episode's end, they're screaming abuse at each other. Apparently, this means that, unlike goody-two-shoes Milly and whingeing Egg, they are really in love. But can you really give a toss? The idea behind this series - to make a British Friends with attitude is valid. But, really, these lawyer characters are just too prattish. Oh well ... another TV drama for jilting.