What isn’t a rewatch but feels like one?
Someone on Twitter mentioned “dinnerladies” (lowercase “d” is part of it) as an example of a sitcom where the characters are always at work but never seen working. (I had mentioned this issue, or not issue, but detail, whatever, re: “Miranda.”) It’s closer to “Are You Being Served?” though, in that you do see the cast working, but never quite so much that it prevents them from chatting.
My favorite parts of “Are You Being Served?” are always the asides, like when Mrs. Slocombe, after helping a customer, turns to Miss Brahms and says, “So anyway,” and launches into a story of what happened with her friend Mrs. Axelby at the pub. It creates a whole world beyond the department-store set. For this reason, “dinnerladies” was made for me. Unless I’m misremembering the entire show takes place in the same space, either behind or occasionally in front of a cafeteria counter in a Manchester factory. But it took me many, many episodes to even notice this, so complete is the world depicted via dialogue. Also, as with “Are You Being Served?,” it’s not realist in the least, yet gets at so many truths about workplace and more general human dynamics. Proustian really.
It is good. So good! The first season in particular. The royal-visit ep (a wonderful Britcom trope) most of all. How had I not known about Victoria Wood? (I’d only seen the x Patricia Routledge videos.) How does Britbox ignore her oeuvre entirely? I am in a Victoria Wood sinkhole or as much of one as possible for someone with not much screen time possible.
But re: “dinnerladies” itself, all the characters are perfect, perfectly acted. Season 2 gets a bit sentimental and soap-opera-y and a bit protagonist-as-saint but is still quite funny and worth watching.
It’s an extremely disorienting show to watch time-wise. It feels so old, the hairstyles, the aesthetic, something about it. But it’s set in the then-present: 1998-2000. Which… is actually a while ago, but a time that still seems to me like the present. Kind of. But it’s different from rewatching a show I’d seen at the time (“Seinfeld,” etc.) and finding it at once outdated fashion-wise and somehow current.
Such a special era, and not just because it’s when I happened to be in high school. These were the final pre-9/11 years. Everything has this December 2019 tinge to it. These people have no idea what’s coming.
By some miracle the show manages to be about working-class people without doing the whole after-school special thing (“Roseanne” comes to mind) of insisting that these people are salt-of-the-earth. There’s a risk of that with the presence of one middle-class character, an HR employee from the south of England, but when the rest find her ridiculous it’s more because she’s a type (well-meaning social worker?), in a way that goes beyond class. And it’s a group-of-women show that dispenses with overwrought female friendship tropes. These are women with common purpose: serving factory workers. They talk about pregnancy and menopause, dates and diets, but it’s not a whole thing. This is as articulate as I can be about the show at the moment: nothing is a whole thing. A light touch. I wish I’d have known about Victoria Wood while she was alive, so I could have written her a fan letter or followed her on Twitter, same deal.