Share the Love

No coincidence, I feel, that “Peter Kay’s Car Share” and “Our Friend Victoria” shared the peak viewing 9 till 10 slot on Tuesdays. Arguably, Kay has already attained the ‘National Treasure’ and ‘Comedy Legend’ epithets already applied to Ms Wood and, though he would, presumably, wish to delay the addition of ‘fondly remembered’ for a few years yet he is, I’m sure, aware of the similarities people draw between these two comedy writers. Although, it’s true, a direct line can be drawn connecting both artists to the Godfather of gentle northern humour, Alan Bennett, this should not detract from their talent to extract absurdity from everyday phrases or situations. Yes, they use the mould cast by Bennett to construct outwardly unremarkable characters who create humour by virtue of being unaware that they are doing or saying anything remotely funny, but they take the art-form to new levels.

Not for Kay is the distant sound of a brass band playing the ‘Hovis’ advert, it’s the ‘Forever FM Drivetime Show’ and his ‘Now That’s What I Call Music’ CD with a mixture of school disco hits and adverts for a local Dry Cleaners.  It is in the very ‘ordinariness’ of the characters that Kay extracts the most humour. His character, John Redmond, lives alone, dines alone and sleeps alone. His work, as a middle manager in a supermarket chain, forces him to briefly emerge from his shell and interact with his colleagues but he is soon back in the cocoon of his Fiat 500L and heading home to enjoy his own space. Forced by company policy to volunteer for a ‘car share’ scheme, he meets Kayleigh Kitson (Sian Gibson), a more junior staff member but, we find, very much a kindred spirit who manages to stir something in the recesses of John’s veiled ego and bring out the personality in him with a series of music quiz questions, half-forgotten pop songs from the 80’s and stories about eccentric family members. Conversations, reminiscences and office gossip fill the journeys to and from work. Deadpan, bitter-sweet accounts of failed relationships and family dramas are interspersed with musical fantasies recounting simpler times when John and Kayleigh had youth, love and S-Club7.

If romances can sometimes be described as ‘whirlwind’, Car Share is a love story moving at the pace of a glacier. Each layer inevitably peeled away from the veneer of their personalities reveal a new challenge for the couple. When Kayleigh says ‘petrol’, John can’t help correcting it to ‘diesel’, when Kayleigh talks about her “lady time” John winces at the intimacy and the passage of their relationship to another level is delayed by a further 50,000 years. When John reveals that he likes crinkle-cut chips and hanging baskets, you can sense Kayleigh making a mental note to put any romantic intentions back in their box. When, however, ‘One Step Further’ is played on the car radio, you sense that love is bound to blossom one day as they are instantaneously taken back to 1982. The genius of Kay’s writing enables you to instinctively know that this song has not been chosen because it’s just a catchy tune, a quick Google search reveals this was the UK Eurovision entry when the contest was held in Harrogate, of all places, and an image of a 16 year-old John and Kayleigh moving in different orbits whilst staring at the same moon is created without so much as a line written.

That ‘Car Share’ precedes the tribute to Vicky Wood is wholly correct. Peter Kay as warm-up man for one of comedy’s most respected and lamented  icons seems fitting and appropriate. Two people who walk you across the tightrope between real life and fantasy, love and friendship and laughter and tears, ready to push you one way or the other but to never let you fall.          

‘Car Share’ is on BBC1 Tuesday at 9pm               

This review also appears on  https://tellysgonewrong.blogspot.co.uk/