Seriously silly TV

And naughty Nancy Mitford

I couldn’t resist a short post on this…

As a winter distraction I found myself gulping down an ITV four-parter called Playing Nice, one of those dramas that are always set by the sea (Cornwall stepping in for the now vieux jeu East Sussex), and centre upon some appalling domestic crisis, eg a stalker/ dodgy partner, usually resolved in such a way as to leave open the possibility of the truly desired ending: a Second Series.

Generic TV, in other words. If done with enough conviction I often prefer it to the more elevated stuff. Better an engrossing borderline-absurdity than a self-important piece of politicking pseudo-cinema (I don’t mean Wolf Hall, which was astounding - Mark Rylance greeting/bolstering his executioner (‘All right?’) my undisputed TV moment of the year - but I do mean quite a lot of other things). Many people have savaged Playing Nice. I must be honest: I enjoyed it. It had de luxe casting - James Norton, Niamh Algar, James McArdle, Jessica Brown Findlay - and a script that skated merrily over the plotting equivalent of thin ice, but was never boring.

It was, however, seriously silly. The Guardian called it ‘a farcical melodrama coiled around an inherently upsetting premise’, in other words the silliness should never have been allowed anywhere near the seriousness, which is certainly one way of looking at it.

The central ‘premise’, which sounds too outlandish to be true, has happened in real life. Two couples - played by the above actors - discover that they were assigned each others’ babies at birth. And one might indeed say (as per The Guardian) that the excitable plot-nonsenses of Playing Nice could scarcely be less appropriate than when applied to such a situation; although the odd thing is that I, who have no children, found myself intensely engaged with it. What, in such circumstances, would I do? How would I feel?

The show was very silly, but it took itself - and this dilemma - very seriously. Even its silliness was taken seriously. The critics (most of them) refused to soften in the face of James Norton giving his considerable all, staggering around in a state of convincingly helpless agony, but what can I say: I admired his heartfelt performance. I was moved when Niamh Algar held her ‘real’ son for the first time, and a confusion of emotion bled into her face.

Yet even in such moments I couldn’t help but recall (rather treacherously) a minor episode from Nancy Mitford’s 1950 novel The Blessing.

By then Nancy was firmly established and living in France, where the book is partly set. What follows is from a scene set at a glittering society ball (The Blessing’s post-war Paris is more couture than collabos), a sort of fancy-dress affair at which people were required to attend with a child, dressed as famous parents and offspring. Quite a fun idea? (Nepo heaven. Where would one even start?) The central male character goes with his son as Talleyrand and Delacroix, which was the first time I had heard that particular rumour.

Then the following happens:

A pair of young mothers now became the centre of interest. They had risen from their lying-in much sooner than the doctors would otherwise have allowed. (French doctors are always very good about recognizing the importance of social events, and certainly in this case had the patients been forbidden the ball they might easily have fretted themselves to death.) One came as the Duchesse de Berri with l’Enfant du Miracle, and the other as Madame de Montespan and the Duc du Maine. The two husbands, the ghost of the Duc de Berri, a dagger sticking out of his evening dress, and Louis XIV, were rather embarrassed really by the horrible screams of their so very young heirs, and hurried to the bar together… The infants were then dumped down to cry themselves to sleep among the coats on her bed, whence they were presently collected by their mothers’ monthly nurses.

Nobody thereafter could feel quite sure that the noble families of Bregendir and Belestat were not hopelessly and for ever interchanged. As their initials and coronets were, unfortunately, the same, and their baby linen came from the same shop, it was impossible to identify the children for certain. The mothers were sent for, but the pleasures of society rediscovered having greatly befogged their maternal instincts, they were obliged to admit that they had no idea which was which. With a tremendous amount of guilty giggling they spun a coin for the prettier of the two babies and left it at that.

Guilty giggling.

Seriously naughty.

What an incomparable tonic she is, so sincere in her levity, in our seriously silly age!