Play for Today: Big Winners (Channel 5)
There’s a terrible old joke which goes something like this. A woman gets home from work and announces to her husband: ‘I’ve won the lottery. Pack your bags!’
‘Great news,’ he says. ‘Should I pack for winter or summer?’
‘I don’t care,’ says the wife. ‘As long as you’re gone by tonight.’
Play For Today: Big Winners is that gag turned into a one-off drama.
Channel 5 is developing a successful line in reviving things that the BBC used to do well (like All Creatures Great And Small).
Last week’s revival of Play For Today featured Nigel Havers and Anita Dobson in a care home, and Big Winners again features love in old age.
Arthur and Edith Thistle (Sue Johnston and Paul Copley) are a couple who’ve been married for nearly 53 years.
They seem to bicker happily together, but there are signs that she is quietly seething with discontent.
Big Winners is one of those plays in which the camera dwells for a long time on a character’s face, so we can see how they’re suffering
People in the old Play For Today did a lot of quiet seething. He, of course, misses all the signs, because that’s part of the problem.
Every week, they wonder what they’d do if they won the lottery. ‘Maybe I’ll leave you and take all the cash,’ she says. That’s one of the signs that he misses.
Moments later, they discover they have won £14 million on the lottery.
One of the best-known Plays For Today was Spend, Spend, Spend, the story of Viv Nicholson, who worked her way through a huge pools win.
That didn’t end well, and neither did Big Winners. Arthur is making big plans, right up to the moment Edith tells him: ‘I want a divorce.’
Edith wants to study psychology, or feminism. She wants to go to London, see plays, and eat food she’s never heard of.
She is so serious about this that she deploys the words no man ever wants to hear: ‘Don’t you think we ought to talk about this properly?’
And that’s the problem, you see. Arthur hasn’t been big on conversation. He’s not been the same since . . . ah, at this point,
I should probably mention that they have a room that’s been padlocked for 50 years. This, as anybody could guess, was where their little daughter died, probably from cot death, while Edith was away.
Arthur and Edith Thistle (Sue Johnston and Paul Copley) are a couple who’ve been married for nearly 53 years
Big Winners is one of those plays in which the camera dwells for a long time on a character’s face, so we can see how they’re suffering. Sue Johnston is, of course, very good at this.
In the end, Arthur makes a desperate gesture. He burns the lottery ticket, and Edith sees all her plans go up in smoke.
We don’t know what happens next, but judging from the expression on Edith’s face, she and Arthur won’t be living happily ever after.
CHRISTOPHER STEVENS is away.
