Hey, I tell you what I would be commissioning if I were head of comedy at the BBC — a sitcom starring the 17th-century French philosophers Rousseau and Diderot, the flatmates who just can’t agree on the fundamental nature of man! The Romantics (BBC Two, Saturday) introduced us to the pair — lifelong friends, although God knows how — and blimey, breakfast- time conversation would have been heavy going. Rousseau was a man of “ intense depressions and serene happiness”, and played by David (Doctor Who) Tennant as an exuberant man in a cravat. Diderot, on the other hand, was depicted as wearing leather gloves while playing chess — and we all know what that means. U-P-T-I-G-H-T. We first came across the pair shooting the breeze in a teashop.
“The finest privilege of our reason exists in not believing in anything with the blind and mechanical impulsion of instinct. Man is born,” Diderot surmised, calm, cerebral and smug, “to think for himself.” “To feel is to exist! Our feelings come, most incontestably, before our thoughts!” Rousseau replied, before presumably adding “And pass me the jam! I want to eat it from my hand, free as the wind!”
Imagine Christmas Day with the two: “Man is born to open his presents one at a time,” Diderot says, in his black pyjamas, calmly laying out all his gifts in order of size.
“Man is born to open his presents ALL AT ONCE! AND have Quality Street for breakfast!” Rousseau screams, already dressed in his new cowboy outfit.
Alas, not even the prospect of Doctor Who, all covered in jam, being philosophical could save The Romantics from being undeniably plodding — an unexpected turn of events, given that its brief covered the fermentation of revolution, the French aristocracy being beheaded, and Coleridge getting whacked on poet dust. The main problem appeared to be with the presenter Peter Ackroyd — or, rather, what the director had decided to do with Ackroyd. On meeting Ackroyd and noting his resemblance to Richard Griffiths from Pie in the Sky, the director correctly surmised that Ackroyd wouldn’t look good in a leather coat, striding around some Gothic ruins like Simon Schama. Instead, Ackroyd’s direction seemed to consist of the instruction: “Stand back from these reconstructions and observe history in the making!”
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Alas, because of the dramatic nature of The Romantics, this cast an odd mood over the whole affair. Here, say, were innocent extras being carted off in the tumbril for summary execution during The Terror — and there, on the edge of the action, is Richard Griffiths from Pie in the Sky, just passively letting it all happen. Rich! They’re gonna die! You have to save them!
I half expected Griffiths — sorry, Ackroyd — to turn up in The Virgin Queen (BBC One, Sunday). The scene where all the Protestant martyrs were burned at the stake would have been ideal for Ackroyd to do some standing around in, while looking Catherine Tate-ishly unbovvered. To be frank, he could hardly have looked more out of place than the rest of the cast — God bless Dexter Fletcher, but his is a face that one does not readily accept floating above a ruff. And God bless Ann-Marie Duff, but hers is a presence one does not readily accept as monarchical. It was a 15th century that never convinced — too many clean teeth, artfully dirtied cobbles and declamatory speeches. And Dexter Fletcher in that ruff.
The return of the gardening-and- murder series Rosemary & Thyme (ITV1, Sunday) raises some pretty urgent questions. First and most pressing is, of course, “Why?” This is piffle at its most pootling — a snowstorm of cheap, fluffy fibres that will, likely as not, cause instantaneous brain cancer on inhalation. But obviously the answer to that is, simply, “ITV1”.
What we actually need to address is the lesbian issue. Rosemary and Thyme are, surely, daughters of Lesbos — they wear trousers, bicker with each other, design gardens and solve murders together, and invariably share hotel bedrooms. Their transgressive love for each other is never spelt out in any way, of course — savvy lezzer-aware members of the audience are just allowed to presume that this is the case, while everyone else presumably watches it for the long- shots of lovely gardens in May.
However, this does raise a philosophical conundrum. If Rosemary & Thyme really does have a homosexual subtext, then it is one of the most daring programmes in broadcasting history — a wholly successful attempt to present a positive, happy portrayal of lesbianism to mainstream, primetime, lowbrow audience, and therefore a subversive strike of genius. On the other hand, if there is no lesbian subtext, Rosemary and Thyme really is b******s. Oh, if only we knew!