TV Review: “Life”

Tuesday, BBC One, 9pm

Life

One of the many commendable things about this semi-spin-off from Mike Bartlett’s Doctor Foster, is that you don’t need to have seen Doctor Foster to enjoy it. Life is its own thing (coincidentally the title of my new soul-jazz concept LP). Bartlett, like all good dramatists, appreciates the instinctive impact of stories in which characters discover that trusted loved one weren’t all they appeared to be. But sometimes there is hope.

The storyline involving Peter Davison’s self-serving bully and Alison Steadman as his wife, who has been ground down by decades of ‘jokes’, is one of the best pieces of drama I’ve seen on TV this year. Great writing, great performances.

All six episodes are available on iPlayer.

Source: Paul Whitelaw THE COURIER

Alison Steadman: ‘I never thought I would live in such strange and scary times’

The actor is back from lockdown with two new dramas. She talks about her 50-year career, Boris Johnson and the joy of miaowing at John Cleese, while James Corden, Julia Davis and Mike Leigh pay tribute

It took less than a week of lockdown for Alison Steadman to start making puppets. Supplies weren’t a problem; this is a woman so anti-waste she thinks supermarkets should charge a fiver for plastic bags and donates her old hair to the birds. “It’s very good for nests; it’s soft and it complements the grass and sticks.”

So, come late March, she decided to knock together a Mr Punch to entertain her grandson on FaceTime. “I’d got all the stuff: toilet roll holder, newspaper, flour, plasticine, Christmas decorations, an old cushion.

“I love Punch and Judy. When I was a child, we’d sometimes go shopping in Liverpool city centre and my treat, if I behaved, was to watch it outside St George’s Hall. People say: ‘Oh, but he used to beat his wife with a stick.’ But as a kid you don’t know that. It’s just fun.”

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23 Walks: Alison Steadman and Dave Johns shine in sexagenarian rom-com

REVIEW: This is an insubstantial film, but a defiantly big-hearted and pleasant one too.

Someone a lot wiser than me (and frankly, who isn’t?) once said, “íf there truly is a god, and he likes us, then he would let dogs live longer”.”

Anyone who’s ever been owned by a dog understands that exactly. Dogs do have a way of transforming us, even as they are moulting and farting their way through our lives, eating us out of house and home and then dying just when we weren’t ready for it. And, dogs do have an uncanny knack for introducing us to new people, who we at least have dogs in common with.

Which is, near enough, the premise of 23 Walks, from writer and director Paul Morrison (Little Ashes).

Holding the leashes of their respective best friends are Fern and Dave. She is 60-something, freshly divorced and really not interested in starting anew with anyone just yet. He is Dave, apparently a widower, and seemingly the loveliest bloke you could ever run into on a blustery day in a north London park.

The two become fond of each other while walking their hounds. An initial friendship turns to a tentative romance. But, both have their secrets and privacies, and there’ll be a few fraught moments before anything like love can prevail. Continue reading

Happy 76th Birthday Mike Leigh

Life is Sweet (1990)

Interview Jane Horrocks, Alison Steadman and Mike Leigh “Life Is Sweet”
“Life Is Sweet” 1990

High Hopes (1988)

“High Hopes” 1988

Career Girls (1997)

“Career Girls” 1997

Another Year (2010)

“Another Year” 2010
Interview Mike Leigh and Lesley Manville

Happy Go Lucky (2008)

“Happy Go Lucky” 2008
Q&A New York with Sally Hawkins and Mike Leigh

Secrets and Lies (2008)

Mike Leigh Interview “Secrets and Lies”

Naked (1993)

“Naked” with the late Katrin Cartledge
Kermode commentary on “Naked”

The Archers new star Alison Steadman: Radio 4 show is no “middle class bubble”

The new star of the BBC Radio 4 soap also looks back at her trailblazing career, and how the TV industry has changed since the 1970s

Alison Steadman is explaining why she loves being on the radio. “I haven’t got the nose to do Virginia Woolf on telly,” she says, “but I can be her on the radio. I can be Princess Di, even Margaret Thatcher. I can be anyone.”

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