Twentysomething sex, drink and drugs collides with harsh reality in Jimmy McGovern's Cumbria-set morality tale
Current Spooks scheduling aside, we all know what Sunday evening television on the BBC is supposed to be: rolling hills, gentle plotlines, the occasional priest ambling politely into view. It's Hamish Macbeth, Ballykissangel, Monarch of the Glen. But for four weeks in 1997, Sunday evening on BBC1 was Jimmy McGovern's The Lakes ? and while the priest and rolling hills were still in place, the plotlines were a long way from gentle.
A Cumbria-set tale of Liverpudlian likely lad Danny Kavanagh (John Simm), The Lakes is a hard-bitten riot of a show. Set in the dog days of the last century, it tackles everything from gambling addiction to how it feels to be the outsider in a small community when tragedy hits.
Rewatching it now the most notable (and in some ways shocking) thing is how little has changed. If it wasn't for the clothing and the lack of mobile phones, you might think that it was set in the present, thanks to its enduring themes of the frustration of poverty and unemployment and the heady rush of being young, selfish and in lust.
The show is not without faults. The dialogue, as so often with McGovern, occasionally lurches into soapbox-rant mode, while some characters are more clearly defined than others (Robert Pugh's melancholy priest is particularly memorable). The Lakes also appears oddly rushed. The first 90-minute episode alone contains enough plot ? unexpected pregnancy, shotgun marriage, gambling addiction, a tragic and avoidable accident, two hidden love affairs ? to fuel nine or 10 episodes of most other shows.
Yet in a strange way this hyperactivity works in the show's favour. This is a drama about the recklessness of youth: the lies we tell to ourselves and to others, the heightened emotions, the crashing over-dramatised lows. If Danny, his girlfriend Emma (Emma Cunniffe) and the rest of the twentysomething hotel crew seem to live on fast-forward in a blur of late 90s music, sex, drink and pills, then perhaps that's a pretty accurate depiction of life at that age, when nothing seems worth taking too seriously.
It is only a matter of time before bitter reality intrudes, of course ? and by halfway through the first episode it becomes clear that we are watching a modern-day morality play, a dark-hued tale of redemption lost and possibly regained, where the stakes are much higher than first presumed.
Anchoring it all is a career-making performance from John Simm as the poetry-quoting, horseracing-addicted Danny. Never less than believable whether aching to connect with Cumbria's wide-open spaces or lose himself in booze and drugs, Simm takes what could be a fairly stock character and imbues him with heart, vulnerability and rough-edged soul.
McGovern has admitted that The Lakes is partially autobiographical ? he was also a gambling addict and he met his wife Eileen while working at a hotel in Cumbria ? and it shows in the small personal touches. When a depressed Danny looks over the lakes and recites WH Auden's The Shield of Achilles there's a heart-wrenching intensity that convinces you that McGovern is channelling his own conflicted memories to strong effect.
Nor is it all Simm and McGovern. Emma Cunniffe, who went on to Casualty and The Bill, is touching as the naive Emma, while Mary Jo Randle turns in an affecting, subtle performance as her mother. Best of all however is Kay Wragg (also late of The Bill) whose difficult, unloved Lucy manages to make you pity her even as she wreaks vengeance with the narcissism of a spoilt child.
The second series, which aired two years later with McGovern less closely involved, tipped into soap opera grand guignol with a plethora of overheated plots ? although I still have a soft spot for the complex relationship between Lucy and Danny ? but the first season remains as moving and mournful a hymn to the fatalism of youth as has been written. For that alone it's worth rewatching .
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/tvandradioblog/2011/sep/27/box-set-club-the-lakes
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