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| Text to separate 1 | Tick Bite Fever | Text to separate | British As A Second Language |
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Available now from Ebury Press:
British As A Second Language More details here Click here to buy it Also published by Ebury: Dave's highly acclaimed African memoir Tick Bite Fever |
| Goodbye Ally - and Good Riddance [Commissioned by The Mail On Sunday, 2002] THERE WAS only one thing wrong with Ally McBeal, the American TV comedy series which has this week been cancelled by its producers, the Fox network. Unfortunately, that one thing was Ally McBeal. The show had a clever format, nifty plots, a fine cast, witty scripts - and a central, eponymous character who happened to be the single most insufferable thing on television (“single” being the telling word here.) You might describe McBeal as the fly in the ointment, if she didn't bear such a vivid resemblance to a different species of invertebrate, the praying mantis. Ally McBeal will receive her final US airing in May, much to the relief of women, or anyone who likes women, or knows women, or has met women from time to time. There is no question but that McBeal was intended as an Everywoman character, crafted to lure in a female audience who would respond to her problems. The search for love. The tidal surge of hormones. The ticking of the biological clock. She was Bridget Jones to the power n. Next to McBeal, her dizzy, helpless British counterpart stood up as a model of stout self-reliance (the telling word in this instance being “stout”.) McBeal tended to elicit not empathy but the overwhelming urge to give her a good slap; along with the suspicion that if you did, she might break. Even Calista Flockhart, the actress who portrays McBeal, has taken offence at being identified with her character's neuroses. If Flockhart has a problem with McBeal, you can hardly blame the rest of us for shuddering at the sight, sound or very thought of her. McBeal accomplished the rare feat of being a fictional figure insulting to both sexes. To women, for representing every vapid self-indulgence which might, anywhere within a light year of real life, prove something of a drawback. To men, for embodying the kooky, girlish, fluttering frailty which we supposedly go nuts for, but in truth must be nuts to go for. It's hard to imagine McBeal possessing a navel - where would she put it? - but having spent five years gazing squarely at it with those hyperthyroid eyeballs, she presumably must do. The cumulative irritation factor of its title character may help explain Ally McBeal's slide down the US ratings, which has led Fox to kill it off before it becomes as desperate as its drippy heroine. But the decision might also have something to do with the success of rival comedy Sex And The City. The newer show's leading ladies, fashionable Manhattanites that they are, make McBeal look like the kind of old hat they wouldn't be caught dead wearing. Certainly, Carrie, Miranda, Samantha and Charlotte are no less vulnerable, puzzled or wayward than Ally McBeal, but there's one crucial difference: they cope with it. Having gone to pieces, they reassemble themselves. Thanks to this, they give off that salty smack of reality which McBeal so wanly lacks. Of course, the fact that in America they appear on cable network HBO, and can thus strip, swear and fornicate to the scriptwriters' hearts' content, doesn't hurt Sex And The City's bid for authenticity. To judge a television program by its nearness to reality is, patently, a nonsense. It isn't real. It's television. What matters is the sense of reality; how effectively it makes itself feel real to its audience. That the quartet in Sex And The City lead lives most British women can only fantasize about isn't the point. As characters - lusty and go-getting, but often flawed and failing - they ring true. Their clothes, jobs and apartments may be unattainable, but their amours and frustrations are funny and familiar. Ally McBeal charmed its way past many an obstacle to viewer credulity. You could buy its doolally courtroom storylines. You could accept, and even delight in, the singing attorneys and dancing defendants. What you could not possibly believe, with the best will in the world, was Ally McBeal herself. How in the name of Cherie Blair did she hold down a job in a high-powered law office? The woman never did a stroke. Her employer, the firm of Cage and Fish, might usefully have rebranded itself Fret, Dither, Pout, Brood and Sulk. That, after all, was what McBeal was paid top dollar to do all day, and it was certainly the most her clients could expect for their money. Apart from the ones she dated; and even they might well have felt swindled. Was there a message here? If so, it seems to be this: the way through the glass ceiling is face first, with a bulging underlip and even more jutting overbite. Granted, you may be forever loveless and childless; but the notion that this might be down to your drivelling self-obsession, rather than your glittering career, will be completely lost on you. If, by doing away with McBeal, her creator, David E Kelley, is tacitly admitting that women no longer identify with such a character, then that's good news for everyone. Maybe it will have the eventual, knock-on effect of discouraging the Ally McBeal who works - or at least sits - in every office and moves in every social circle. The simpering narcissist whose mannerisms are better suited to her dress size (eight) than her actual age; whose idea of problem-solving is to mope and bat her lashes until someone else takes care of it; and who, unlike Copernicus and Galileo, would very likely defy the Inquisition to maintain that the planets rotate around a body other than the Earth: herself. All material on this site is copyrighted © to David Bennun and may not be reprinted or reused without permission. But if you dislike Ally as much as I do, go ahead and ask. Back to Comment |
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