Alan Bennett's Talking Heads

These all are basically a master class in acting. All done with such an intimate and revealing insight. The sense you get while watching is that although the circumstances of our lives may differ the emotional crises we go through are universal. We can all experience moments of true happiness but suffer all the same. Of course some stories grip you more than others but for the most part there's always a sense of sympathy or relatability brought on by these performances.

A series of no-brainers led to the belated rebirth of Alan Bennett's seminal TV monologues series "Talking Heads" in the era of the pandemic. After a quick whip-round and you get some of the finest British actors of the modern era and reduced production crews almost doing a "greatest hits" run through on the hauntingly empty sets of Eastenders.

So - not much new here materialwise and mainly of interest for a series of powerful performances - only some cod northern accents spoil the fun but no one is below excellent and I was particularly moved by both Jodie Comer and Tamsin Greig. The best is still undoubtedly the evergreen Lady of Letters performed by the superlative Imelda Staunton. Of the two "new" ones written in 2019, An Ordinary Woman is rather too disturbingly incestuous to even be engaging and The Shrine is unexpectedly touching and majestically done by Monica Dolan. They hardly feel out of step with the originals, either way.

In British culture the Alan Bennett monologue is a well-trodden presentation - and the sparse magnetism and sharp writing is dulled somewhat by how chokingly regimented the single-person narratives have to be. The very slow zoom. The sitting down and fondling a teacup. Those constant fades to black. It's difficult to make it seem or feel dynamic and in the era of experimental TV anthologies like Inside No. 9 or Room 104 settling in for half an hour of stiff theater can be rather tedious.

However - given the times we are in, no-brainer or not, it does feels very apt and in these loooong barely edited performances you do get to really appreciate just how skilled these actors are, it's just a shame the majority aren't the first ones to read it.

Stunning!

Martin Freeman is awesome in "A chip in the sugar" but Imelda Staunton is sublime in "A lady of letters". Every aspiring actor hoping to win an audition should study this episode as a guide to what acting is.

Alan Bennett is a national treasure. His writing is prosaic but at the same time stunningly beautiful.

I did feel a little uncomfortable with some of the subject matter but Bennett takes no prisoners... life is what life is.

I've loved it ! My particular favorite is Martin Freeman in A Chip in the Sugar. Such an amazing performance !

I seem to remember I was uninterested in this revamp of Talking Heads when broadcast, thinking why try to improve on perfection. Then I recently learned there was a new monologue included with Sarah Lancashire, who I revere, talking of an incestuous love for her son; a close friend had that experience so I was very interested and acquired the set. It is a very quiet piece, tragic and moving. Of course I then felt it would be silly not to listen to the rest and it was, as I expected, a deeply disappointing experience. Not that the cast is not a stellar collection of current british acting talent, but just that I am far too fond of the originals. They travel through life with me on my ipod of the moment, Routledge, Hird, Wilton, Bennett, Cole, Atkins - Ive listened a hundred times and they really don't stale and though I know what's coming, I travel on. Mostly with these modern iterations I either started or took a slice from the middle, and I confess there wasn't a single one I listened to in its entirety. Except The Shrine, which is new and nicely done. While I can't say along with one amazon reviewer 'the original was the best' I have to say I do think it may be the case, but one is partial. For those reviewers who say they haven't seen the originals, they are available for a song on ebay. Whatever, the writing remains subtle, surprising, and layered, the common theme being, as Bennett said, 'people in situations to which they are not entirely privy.' But that's all of us, no?