A nightmare incarnate
Love it or hate it, Nighty Nighty, the latest six-part ‘sick-com’ will be keeping you up past your bedtime.
Julia Davis, the star and writer of the latest comedy to be shipped over from the UK, made a single mistake with Nighty Night – its title. But if you’re one of the few people in Dubai yet to catch a glimpse of the new show and you’re expecting a mild-mannered, middle-aged, Morecombe and Wise style bedtime chitchat, you are in for a rude awakening.
In the first episode we meet Jill Tyrell who describes herself as: ‘mid 20s, widow, with a lust for life and a flexible spine’. When her husband is diagnosed with cancer, she pleads ‘why me, what did I do to deserve this?’ and so begins the downward spiral to oceanic depths of self-obsession that have made Jill one of the most hated – and Julia one of the most loved – women on television right now.
Inconvenienced by her husband’s inconsiderately slow death, Jill, the ever-dutiful wife, buys Terry a book entitled Your Journey To Death. Another gift from the heart are the clearly-too-small pyjamas – which although Terry says don’t fit him Jill insists: ‘Doctor says you’ll be small towards the end’. She then tells everyone her husband has died, while she soaks up the sympathy and leaves Terry phoning his empty home from the hospital, wondering why he’s getting no visitors. Jill meanwhile bags herself a copy of Your Whole Life Ahead of You, signs up to a dating agency on the prowl for anyone over 18, and becomes wince-inducingly obsessed with her new, married, neighbour – the dishy doctor Don.
After first being shown last year on BBC3 in Britain, the six-part sick-com, dubbed ‘a West Country version of Fatal Attraction’, quickly achieved cult status and a stream of award nominations. But even Glen Close’s character would shy away from some of Mrs Tyrell’s tactics. Throughout the series, the sociopathic antihero sets about trapping her prey with minimal subtlety: suggesting Don’s wife (multiple sclerosis sufferer Cathy) becomes celibate, tricking Don into performing an emergency breast examination and ‘jogging’ in lingerie and stilettos past his house. The platinum blonde beautician would make the most desperate housewife on Wisteria Lane blush with embarrassment.
With a fantastic line-up of the vilest characters imaginable, this is far from being a one-woman show. Following his much publicised infidelity and subsequent sacking from the Beeb, Angus Deayton made his brave BBC (albeit BBC3) comeback as Don. Meanwhile Rebecca Front’s simpering Cathy keeps the strained smile fixed perfectly: ‘Come on, Catherine Wheel,’ is one of Jill’s memorable taunts while pushing her in a wheelchair. Regular fixture on the alternative comedy scene Kevin Eldon makes downtrodden and long-suffering Terry, ahem, come to life, while Ruth Jones plays Linda, the wheezy goth hairdresser working at Beauty By Jill. ‘You know how I feel about asthma. Take a deep breath and get over it,’ spits Jill, while her much-maligned employee massages the customers’ feet. With such fantastically wellobserved characters, you have to worry who Davis based these individuals on – while keeping your fingers crossed that you never bump into the monstrous Jill at a party.
Davis’s slow-burning rise to fame has been cranked up a notch thanks to the success of this, her first solo project, but the 39-year-old has already had a long career in television writing and performing. Comparisons with The Office, Brass Eye, and Alan Partridge’s brand of cringe comedy are unsurprising when you discover she has worked on all three, and Dubai audiences will soon be treated to Human Remains on Star World co-written by Davis and Rob Brydon. And fear not, far from bidding adieu to her evil alter ego, a second series of Nighty Night has already been filmed and is currently going down a storm in Britain.
You will either love or hate the devilishly dark humour spread thickly throughout the first series currently being shown on Star World. Hammering, rather than touching, on sensitive subjects the dramedy is littered with witty one-liners that will have you laughing out loud with your friends or squirming uncomfortably in the company of the easily offended. With a certain element of bad taste, watching Nighty Night is almost like rubber necking at a pile-up on the motorway – you know it’s wrong, but you just can’t help yourself. While Star World has scheduled the show at the antisocial time of 23:00-00:00, Nighty Night is worth staying up slightly past your bedtime for. Michelle Byrne.