IIt’s impossible to know why exactly – the heart wants what the heart wants – but my viewing habits have leaned towards the suburbs lately. Perhaps my body, trapped in a small London apartment in Lockdown, longs for the space and the green of the suburbs. “Maybe,” I think, watching dinner on Friday evening for the hundredth time, “I would be happier if I twitch behind a bay window and reprogram my doorbell to play a funny tune. Maybe I would find peace if I had a garden big enough to put a trampoline in. Who knows?”
Lee Mack knows because he plays Stuart – a midlife crisis created by a tired wedding DJ – in Semi-Detached (Thursday, BBC Two), a new real-time sitcom firmly anchored in the dead end world . There’s no way to describe the show without sounding pretty naff: each episode follows an increasingly hectic 20-minute section of Stuart’s catastrophic life, juggling his undulating younger girlfriend (Ellie White), his Perma, across the duplex, He lives in -shagging father (Clive Russell), outlawed brother (Neil Fitzmaurice) and new baby (played only by a baby), along with the complaints of the house across the street, where his brusque ex-wife (Samantha Spiro) pains her smug new husband (Patrick Baladi) and his rebellious older daughter (Sarah Hoare) all live in real time.
Occasionally, the unpredictable neighbor (Geoffrey McGivern as some sort of elderly Kramer) shows up to complicate matters. Absurd things keep happening, and Lee Mack just has to stand there and take it and say “what-is-life-how-how!” Indulge. great exhalation.
That sounds bad because every sitcom you’ve ever seen and forgotten has followed the “Strange Things Happen To A Tired Man” structure, but I assure you that Semi-Detached is different. First, the pace is hectic. Within the first six minutes of the first episode, Mack: i) refused labor with his screaming girlfriend; ii) had a polite conversation with his father about the one-night stand he was having; iii) sprinted across the street to recruit his ex-wife for the increasingly pressing issue of taking his girlfriend to the hospital; iv) had a little tête-à-tête with her new husband; v) wished his newly bald daughter a happy birthday; vi) said a happy hello to his neighbor; vii) has been surprised by his brother from the Isle of Man; and viii) watched a man take off his own thumb with a circular saw. All of this happens in one insane shot. The camera follows as Mack runs from house to house, supported by a soundtrack of drums and kettledrum that makes the whole thing look like Birdman when Birdman plays in a cream-carpeted living room in Central England.
The basis for this is always the rules of the tea ceremony of life in semi-detached houses, the gray foundation on which absurdity can flourish. The suburb of Stuart is a vortex of constant favors, neighbors to talk to, tasks that loom like a time bomb. There’s one scene that plays so deliciously on the real-time imagination – a squirming, semi-silent moment of small talk with a neighbor while the clock ticks 24-style behind him – that a proxy makes you feel uncomfortable. The allure of dead-end living is that it is sane and boring. Semi-detached is anything but.