Royal Wedding & Worried About the Boy

BBC Two is currently running its 80s season, consisting of several documentaries and two wonderful dramas. Royal Wedding (by Abi Morgan – Birdsong, Brick Lane and Life Isn’t All Ha Ha Hee Hee) and Worried About the Boy (Tony Basgalloop – Hotel Babylon, Teachers, Being Human) are two very different programmes, but both enjoyable in their own way. Morgan’s drama follows a family living in a Welsh village, against the back-drop of Charles and Diana’s wedding in 1981. It seems strange and somewhat patronising to call it a ‘lovely little piece’, but it really was. The eighty minute show was heart-warming and tragic in equal measures. Morgan managed to tackle the political and the historical in an entirely personal way. She also captured the 80s feeling without parodying it too much or making a focal point at the detriment of other detail. The time period and the royal wedding seemed almost incidental, and the lives of the characters took centre stage.

Worried About the Boy was, for me, less about the personal and more about the drama. George O Dowd ripped through the screen in a blaze of drugs, face-paint and sex. The camera work and costumes stood out for me more than the script which, at times, seemed both rushing to get biographical detail in but simultaneously giving the viewer little to engage with. Boy George also made for a not terribly sympathetic character – though the eccentric outfits and make-up more than made up for it.