In his ruefully funny 2012 novel The Man Who Forgot His Wife, John O’Farrell compares the increasingly uncivilised process of divorce to war: ‘In 1939 the RAF thought it was immoral to bomb the Black Forest to deprive the Germans of timber. But by 1945 they were deliberately creating firestorms to kill as many civilians as possible.’ As the title suggests, the starry new divorce-based drama War makes a similar comparison – except that here the unhappy couple are cutting straight to Dresden.
The show began as it meant to go on: which is to say, glitteringly. At a London awards ceremony of ineffable poshness, Morgan Henderson (Dominic West) was named Pioneer of the Year for creating one of the world’s biggest yet nicest social media platforms. In his impressively oily acceptance speech, Morgan declared that ‘we need as much accountability online as there is IRL’. Ironically for him, though, accountability IRL was about to land him in a whole heap of trouble.
During his speech, a young hottie had caught his eye and when it turned out they were staying at the same hotel, it wasn’t long before they were doing the customary clothes-tearing, vertical-foreplay thing against his bedroom wall. The following morning as he slept, the hottie then took a selfie of them in bed together and forwarded it to his wife Carla, with the accompanying text, ‘It’s done.’
Continuing the commitment to glitter, when the message arrived, Carla (Sienna Miller – I did say it was starry) was in Paris where, as a world-famous movie star, she was plugging her latest film. Even so, she found time to summon her London lawyers and issue the unambiguous legal instruction, ‘Take this photo, take this case and take him for every fucking penny he’s got.’
At this stage, Carla was hoping her plans for divorce would stay secret, but Morgan soon had his suspicions and decided to lawyer up too. He opted for a team from a rival firm, who gleefully took on what was ‘likely to be the biggest divorce case in British legal history’. Once they had, it was clear that the eponymous war applies at least as much to the couple’s lawyers as to the couple themselves. Both firms promised to ‘fight dirty’ – and both proved as good as their word in ways I’d better not spoil given that this first episode goes out on Friday.
What I can say is that the result is enormous, dark fun. Viewers who like a goodie or two to root for should probably look elsewhere. Yet, while the characters may be uniformly mean, the programme-makers are unfailingly generous in making sure we have a good time, as the twists and one-liners pile up, and the lawyers’ dirtiness is accompanied by large dollops of the best kind of soapiness.
Granted, dramas that allow us to simultaneously ogle at and despise rich people have become somewhere between a TV staple and a TV cliché. Nonetheless, War is shaping up to be one of the most entertaining (although maybe not weightiest) examples since Succession.
War is shaping up to be one of the most entertaining examples since Succession
On a sadder note, this week we said goodbye to the brilliant Colin from Accounts, written by and starring Patrick Brammall and Harriet Dyer, who are husband and wife IRL. Right to the end, it achieved that rare feat for a comedy drama of being both comic and dramatic.
As you may (and possibly should) know by now, the title comes from the name that the main characters Gordon and Ash gave to the mild-mannered dog that he ran over at the start of the first series after she flashed her nipple at him. From there, their shared love of the dog turned into a shared love of each other – which in classic romcom style, they were intermittently aware of but that we never doubted for a minute. Series two ended with Gordon making an embarrassingly drunken public proposal at a friend’s wedding that kyboshed the relationship for three years. This third one duly saw them edging their way back together.
Throughout its run, perhaps the most impressive aspect of the show was its perfect control of tone: one that constantly undercut the essential sweetness with lots of rudery, yet never undermined it. But there was also a terrific line-up of supporting characters – each of whom got a chance to shine, or receive their richly deserved comeuppance, in this week’s concluding two episodes.
And in the final one of all, Colin from Accounts stayed true to its ideals, as the bracing lack of soppiness only gradually (and very satisfyingly) gave way to the full Richard Curtis. Despite its now-global success, it also remained uncompromisingly Australian, with the last of the many obstacles in Gordon and Ash’s romantic path provided by his ill-advised decision to have a ‘pash’ at a ‘bucks’.
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