Retrospective Review #4 of 5
You’d thought I’d forgotten this mini-series of reviews, hadn’t you? Well, the Other Viewer and I finally got around to watching one of ITV’s two-hour dramas that were on over Christmas-time and we got to see a really great story played out in the form of Perfect Parents. The production reunited writer and directer, Joe Ahearne with lead actor, Christopher Eccleston, who had worked together on five episodes of 2005’s Doctor Who. Beefing up the cast even further were David Warner and Susannah Harker (who I still can’t watch without thinking of Chancer). The plot revolved around a daughter who was trying to make the most of her education in a pretty tough comprehensive school and when the parents get to understand exactly how hard the school is becoming, they take matters into their own hands. They find a better alternative in the form of the local Catholic High School and decide to try and get young Lucy through the admissions process by pretending to be devout catholics.
This, seemingly inevitably, led to a pretty cliched view of catholicism being portrayed… a priest with a history of child abuse, a stern nun running the school, sombre church services and so on. However, this didn’t distract from storyline that was well paced, that was funny in parts yet serious when it needed to be, and that gradually and cleverly unravelled as the deception was laid bare. Fraud, murder, death and blackmail are all fine ingredients for a yuletide, televisual feast but these all seemed to take a back seat in what was essentially a play about guilt… parent’s guilt for not being able to get their daughter the education she deserved, a priest’s guilty past, the guilt of a blackmailer/murderer and, of course, catholic guilt: that always makes for good copy.
Tags: Christopher-Eccleston, David-Warner, ITV, Modern Drama, Perfect-Parents, Susannah-Harker
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