Love and bingeing through the lockdown

Lockdown, I’ve discovered, is a good time for a Love binge.

No, no, not that kind. I’m talking about bingeing on TV series about Love. And there are three we’ve been enjoying recently on that theme. One of them goes so far as to take the remarkably original title, Love.

Only one of them is new, so you may know them anyway. But just in case, here are my recommendations.

Johnny Flynn and Antonia Thomas in Lovesick
Having fun (left) and not so much (right)

Let’s start with Lovesick, a British series, jointly produced by Channel 4 and Netflix. It’s based in Glasgow (though you have to work that out for yourselves, and the accents are almost all English). It’s still available on Netflix.

The premise amused me: a young man (Johnny Fynn) diagnosed with chlamydia has to contact all his sexual partners of the last several years, of whom despite his obvious emotional clumsiness and ineptitude in relationship-building, it turns out there are a large number.

He’s surrounded by a diverse crew of friends, including the would-be gigolo (Daniel Ings) who’d rather not be (OK, you have to watch the series to get that), the friend (Joshua McGuire) for whom every relationship is long-term until it blows up in his face, and the young woman (Antonia Thomas) whose attraction for one particular young man (no, no spoilers here) is veiled by a series of attachments that could never prove as satisfactory.

Around them is a string of secondary characters with their idiosyncrasies and their peculiar stories which keep the series moving nicely through its 22 episodes in three seasons (originally released between 2014 and 2018). Cleverly, all the characters occasionally do things that are off-putting, but then win their way back into our affections in other, more attractive ways. 

Overall, there wasn’t a character I didn’t feel I liked, at least most of the time. Which is a great relief, since I’ve seen – and abandoned – plenty of series where I feel that no one appeals to me.

Mae Martin and Lisa Kudrow in Feel Good
Charlotte Ritchie is behind them

The second series is new (released in 2020), with only one six-episode season so far. Feel Good is also British, and made jointly by Channel 4 and Netflix. There’s no confirmation of a second season yet, though it would surprise me if there weren’t one (though perhaps delayed by coronavirus).

It’s a semi-autobiographical look at the life of the acting lead and co-writer (with Joe Hampson) of the show, Mae Martin. She’s a Canadian-born stand-up comic, based in Britain since 2011.

Martin’s a good standup and we got some amusing comedy scenes (not quite as many or as extended as in The Marvellous Mrs Maisel, but nonetheless of the same general kind). She’s also an attractively complex individual, who resists being categorised as either bisexual or lesbian, and identifies as either non-binary or a woman, using the pronouns ‘she’ and ‘they’. No problem there, as I’ll use whatever pronoun about them that she wants.

From the first episode, Mae gets into a new relationship with a straight woman (Charlotte Ritchie), ironically called George, and the rest of the season takes us on a roller coaster ride of their relationship, mixed in with the problems of coping with addiction (or with an addicted friend) and of handling the stereotypically awful British family of George’s friends.

Everything’s treated with a deft and light touch, making the even some difficult scenes beautifully comic. There’s also a wonderful performance by Lisa Kudrow as Mae’s mother (she says her own parents are nothing like the depiction in the series, and I can only say, just as well). An unusual, quirky and beautifully funny series.

Gillian Jacobs and Paul Rust in Love
Their roller coaster has troughs as well as peaks

Finally, there’s that series with the startlingly distinctive title, Love. That name’s so distinctive that, for the first time ever, I couldn’t use the title to track the entry down on IMDB.

You don’t know IMDB? It’s the best, most comprehensive internet movie database there is. Funnily enough, that’s what IMDB stands for, by the way.

The only way to search for it, I found, was to look for the name of Paul Rust, and then pick the series title from the list of his filmography. That’s quite appropriate, as it happens, since Rust is a highly talented individual, who’s both an accomplished scriptwriter and a fine actor. He’s the co-creator, one of the producers and a star of the show.

His co-star is Gillian Jacobs as the wacky non-conformist with the addicted personality (yep, we get some addiction in this series too), who has a bit of a rocky ride with Rust’s character. Like Lovesick, there’s a large collection of secondary characters, each funny in his/her/their way (see? I’m learning about personal pronouns). And, again like Lovesick, the behaviour of the main characters makes them absolutely unbearable at some moments, though at others they redeem themselves, so you can’t help sympathising with them generally.

I have to confess that we’ve only watched season 1 so far, but we’ve enjoyed it enormously. It’s a Netflix series that ran from 2016 to 2018, with 34 episodes over three series. My suspicion is that when we get to the end, I shall feel as many others have, that it was cancelled too soon.

Still, it has all the qualities one needs to get through some more of the Lockdown with sanity undisturbed…

East Coast Feel Good Story

It didn’t start as a feel-good story.

“Oh my God!” said the woman, suppressed panic in her voice, as the train slipped out of Peterborough station, ”I’ve left my handbag on the platform.”

She was in her late thirties or early forties, dressed in a way that said both ”business” and ”studiedly casual.” She was, understandably, distressed.

Virgin East Coast train.
Scene of a minor human sympathy story

There followed a long and, on her part, tearful conversation with the ticket collector. He was shorthanded on the train and not handling the tension well. He couldn’t, at first, find it in himself to show her any sympathy.

“Where’s your ticket, madam?”

“Why,” she wailed, “in my handbag, of course. On the platform back there.”

“Well, if you don’t have your ticket, I’m going to have to ask you to leave the train.”

“Leave the train? Leave the train? You just don’t understand. I’ve just been promoted to the kind of job I really want. After nineteen years in the company. This is my first day. My new boss is waiting for me in Sheffield. I’m meeting the team this afternoon and we’re all going out this evening. That’s why I’ve brought a case.”

He glanced at her cabin-luggage sized case.

“Yes,” she said, sensing a slight hesitation, “I remembered the case. I forgot my handbag. Oh, can’t you phone the station and ask them?”

He grumbled something incomprehensible. Presumably to say that it wasn’t procedure. But he added, grudgingly, “I’ll see if I can contact them.”

He was back ten minutes later.

“They’ve found your bag. It’s in the ticket office. When are you going back?”

“Tomorrow,” she said.

“Could you pick it up then?”

“Well, I could," but she sounded disappointed. "you don’t suppose they could pop my bag on the next train to Doncaster?”

“It’s not what we do,” he said, but I could feel he was relenting.

“And look, look,” she said, thrusting her phone towards him, “here’s the receipt for my ticket.”

“OK, OK” he said, “we trust you. Don’t worry. We won’t make you leave the train.”

While he was away doing his ticket-collectory thing, she turned to me for sympathy.

“My first day in the new job. My boss is going to kill me.”

I couldn’t see it.

“Tell the story the same way you told it here. He’ll just laugh.”

“Do you think so? This is such an opportunity for me. And I was so looking forward to today.”

“You’ll be in a pub before long having a good laugh over the whole business with your friends.”

The ticket collector was back. He was on the phone.

“I know it’s not usual procedure,” he was saying, “but could you see your way to doing it? I know, I know, but it would make a big difference to her.”

He listened for a while.

“Many thanks. That’s grand. Really. Thank you.”

He hung up and turned to her.

“They’re putting your bag on the next train. If you wait on the platform at Doncaster for the next train, and head to the back, you’ll see the collector. This is my name,” he was pushing a slip of paper towards her, “show him that so he knows you’re the one I rang about and he’ll give you your bag.”

When we drew into Doncaster, she again came past the table where I was sitting.

“I’ve spoken to my boss. He thinks the whole thing’s a joke.”

I smiled at her. And, as she left the train, I could see that for the first time since she’d got on, she was smiling too.

What a good thing the ticket collector found it in him to overcome his own sense of grievance to sympathise with someone in more need than he was. And give a feel-bad story a feel-good ending.