This evening I harvested asparagus

Continuing my trip down The Guardian's Top 50 TV Shows of 2021.  

#46 : Together 

Written by Dennis Kelly, directed by Stephen Daldry and starring James McAvoy and Sharon Horgan, this Covid two-hander certainly didn’t want for talent. A couple are, like the rest of the country, stuck inside together. And, like the rest of the country, they’ve started to hate each other. The real anger, though, is reserved for the government. As such, especially for those who lost a loved one in the first flush of Coronavirus, it was a staggeringly hard watch.

You can't fault the writing, directing or acting talent on display here, so I'm expecting something good.

Well - it starts pretty normally and relatably for us all with a couple unloading vast quantities of toilet roll from their car at the start of lockdown.  And then - BOOM.  It doesn't break the fourth wall as such, but shatter it, stamp on it and then take a baseball bat to it, just to make sure it's gone.  I get the idea that you're supposed to be an unwilling participant in a couple's blazing row, but it all gets a bit difficult to follow.

Things do calm down a bit once that's out the way, mostly because Sharon Horgan's character's ("she" - they're not given names) mum dies so they have to deal with that and then try to work out where they go from there.  And well, that's pretty much it.

And it was a pretty hard watch at times and it's fuelled by a righteous rage, I can tell you - I didn't lose anyone to Covid, but I suspect that one or two people involved in the creation of this did.  It does a good job of conveying the confusion and ignorance that everyone felt at various stages of the virus and serves as a good reminder of some of the lunatic decisions that were being made.

It's all a bit scripted at a million miles an hour - no-one speaks like that all the time.  It definitely shows how good both actors are because there are a lot of lines to learn here and some very long takes - but actually I preferred the slower sections because it gave them more opportunity to do some acting (and gave my brain a chance to catch up)

I don't really feel the need to comment on the acting any more than that - you'd be surprised if they didn't deliver and, needless to say, they don't surprise you here.  We don't always get the chemistry we might expect, but I think that's the way the relationship is written - I'm not convinced they quite deliver the animosity they're supposed to at times, but it was hard to tell exactly how bad things were supposed to be between them.  One thing I'm not sure I can quite forgive is James MacAvoy's man-bun that appears halfway through, but I guess we all did strange things during lockdown.  Wikipedia tells me it was shot in ten days, which feels like a lot of lines for two people to do in that time, but I guess that's their job (and they're both pretty good at it).

Mostly, it all looks very good (they have a lovely house) and is well shot, but I do have some "observations" (ie complaints!).  There is unusual placement of characters - there is often one in the foreground and one in the background, with the focus not always entirely sure where it should be.  I feel there must be a reason for it, but I'm not sure what it is - possibly Covid protocols, but it doesn't seem consistent.  It also gets a bit "online tutorial" at times ("Now I'm going to talk about exponential growth") which feels a bit preaching to the converted - I struggle to imagine that too many people that sat through this didn't already understand most of the points being made.

But I think my main gripe is the minimal presence of their child.  It's a very odd dramatic choice - he is there throughout, but rarely seen, speaks or is spoken to ("we" are spoken to on a much more frequent basis). I think there would have been a lot of mileage in getting his point of view, the effect on him and how his presence affected their relationship, but I guess there was only so many lines they could fit in to the 90 minutes.  Wikipedia tells me that the first draft didn't feature the kid at all and I'd have to say that doesn't entirely surprise me.

Overall, I think it was an "appreciate" rather than enjoy for me.  It was a bit of a struggle to get to the end and it didn't feel overly realistic as a whole, but it did feel like a combination of honest portrayals of understandable reactions - ignorance, anger, grief, acceptance, confusion - the full works, pretty much but all a bit "chuck it at the wall and see what sticks".  Which, combined with some of the odd directorial and writing decisions made me feel it was a missed opportunity - but it was good to see two actors at the top of their game.

#45 - Another very enjoyable series
#47 - An odd entry in the list