TV review: How To Be Old | Imagine… the Colourful Mr Eggleston

Published on Tuesday 14 July 2009 19:02

HOW TO BE OLD BBC4 IMAGINE… THE COLOURFUL MR EGGLESTON BBC1

IT is traditional, when writing about spoof characters such as Spinal Tap or The Rutles, for the journalist to go along with the joke and pretend that they're real.

But since I find this approach so insufferably arch it makes me want to run, elbows first, into a pebbledash wall, I shan't bother pretending that intolerable thespian Nicholas Craig isn't the alter ego of comedy actor Nigel Planer. We are all adults after all.

Planer has revisited this terrific comic creation several times since he first oozed into the spotlight in the early 1990s to present a series of insufferably pompous, utterly absurd acting masterclasses. The latest, How To Be Old, showed that Planer and his writer/director Christopher Douglas have lost none of their enthusiasm for pricking the pretensions of actors who regard their profession with a preposterous level of seriousness.

Douglas' sharp, funny script and Planer's performance were pitch-perfect, once again eking great comedy mileage out of Craig's awful parade of faux humility, ersatz sincerity and unctuous fake chumminess; the most nightmarish luvvy imaginable, he makes Simon Callow look like Jennifer Ellison.

Admittedly, making fun of daft, deluded thespians isn't difficult, but although we are invited to laugh at Craig's pretensions, Planer and Douglas are clever enough to ensure that the character isn't a complete idiot.

Some of his waspish observations – about the vacuity of so much modern TV, for instance – are even perfectly valid. The character is drawn with a delicate, yet entirely successful, mixture of malice and affection.

I usually detest programmes which show old TV clips out of context in order to secure cheap

laughs, but in this case the pointedly chosen montages of laughably mannered acting performances were used, not to sneer "God, wasn't TV dreadful in ye olden days?" but rather: isn't the high-minded notion of acting as a delicate, infinitely layered art form inherently ridiculous?

An obvious point, perhaps, but in Planer and Douglas' expert hands, a very, very funny one.

My only complaint is that the clip montages eventually became intrusive and repetitive; I'd much rather have had more of Craig blathering earnestly about how to play a curmudgeonly butler (it's all in the bushy sideburns, basically), or a dying elderly patient in a hospital drama ("having a good war record buys you a shed-load of sympathy").

And never again will I be able to watch a BBC period drama without noticing actors using the all-important "Oldshire brogue" or – for ladies only – "battleaccent".

In Imagine… the Colourful Mr Eggleston, Alan Yentob profiled legendary American photographer, William Eggleston. This ageing Southern aristocrat's iconic colour photographs (he was the first photographic artist to exhibit in colour, causing much consternation at the time) never fail to startle and unsettle, and this intriguing film certainly made a strong case for his unique talent.

Eggleston himself, however, remained something of an enigma. Despite his hell-raising reputation (imagine Hunter S. Thompson with a camera), he seemed shy and reserved, choosing his words carefully in a slow baritone drawl.

But terrible clich though it is, those haunting photographs spoke far more eloquently of this brilliant, unusual man than mere words ever could.