#74 Debt to Society
03/10/21 16:50
In a week when I’ve been feeling unsettled, despairing and furious whenever I read the news, I don’t know if it’s odd or apt that I’ve found succour in a TV show about a female murderer.
Daisy Haggard’s (and Laura Solon’s) Back to Life is an eggshell piece of perfection. It doesn’t really make me laugh, but not because it’s without humour; it just goes beyond guffaws and takes the comic absurdity of existence to a different plane. When I watch it, I find myself holding my breath, for various reasons – perhaps because I’m wincing, or cringing, or hoping that a tentative connection has been made. Sometimes it’s bleak, even sinister, sometimes it’s almost repellent in its reflection of human frailty, and other times it’s innocent and joyous, but everything is delivered with a lightness of touch, blown in on a gentle Hythe sea breeze.
Daisy plays Miri, back to her seaside hometown after serving 18 years in prison. I’m not as ‘streetwise’ as police commissioner Philip Allott would like, but even I know a sentence that lengthy suggests she did something serious. However, her crime is so obliquely referred to for the first few episodes, that I found myself wondering if it ever existed at all. Maybe it was all some kind of metaphor for womanhood? We do have to apologise a lot, and a lot of people hate us. It didn’t seem outside the realms of possibility that the local reaction to Miri’s return is simply based on her gender - the audacity of going away, and returning; coming and going at will. But no; she did do something really bad, we learn, though it’s more complex than it seems.
Miri moves back in with her parents, who promptly hide the knives. Her mother is played by the glorious Geraldine James, who did such sterling work as Marilla Cuthbert in the Netflix series Anne with an E. I never thought I could love a Marilla as much as I loved the one in the original and best Megan Follows adaptation, but James made the role her own – stern, repressed and soft as an old quilt. On the surface, as Miri’s mother Caroline, she’s not a million miles away from Miss Cuthbert; rather austere, and buttoned up - but then, on occasion, compelled to unbutton in the most inappropriate way. I want to avoid spoilers, so suffice it to say she’s got a sexual side hustle that’s exceptionally ill-advised. Her husband Oscar, Miri’s father, has his own issues, telling a young mother in the doctor’s surgery about his two grandchildren, who don’t exist, because his only daughter’s been in prison since she was a teenager.
It would be difficult to imagine a more unlikely killer than Miri. Her demeanour is meek and gentle, tousled head dipping as she flashes a wide, rueful smile. She’s sweetly out of touch after nearly two decades of incarceration, desperate for a job, any job, and even at her most defiant, in the face of the doctor’s receptionist ‘computer says no’ line, she’s instantly contrite. How could she have committed this horrendous crime, whatever it was? It’s the constant itch of this unusual series; the urge to find out exactly what happened up on the sea-cliff that night. Her former best friend Mandy obviously knows, yet their estrangement is not due to that, but because Mandy never visited or contacted Miri in jail. I love the scenes between Miri and Mandy – the bristling chemistry between them, a hostility that longs to dissolve back into friendship. God, I want them to be friends again. I want Miri’s job at the fish and chip shop to work out. I want her awkward, ingenuous relationship with Billy, the carer next door, to blossom. I want her to find joy, and freedom, and absolution. But will that change, when I know the full details of what she did?
I don’t know, but I do know I’m sick of women always being in the wrong, always to blame. We’re paying our debt to society the whole fucking time. In this beautiful, desolate, yet weirdly empowering series, the woman is the villain, and yet she gets to be the hero too. She’s paid her dues, and now she’s allowed to find pockets of happiness. Allowed to have a go at getting her life back.
Like Miri and Billy putting their arms up on the fairground ride, it’s a cheering image.
Daisy Haggard’s (and Laura Solon’s) Back to Life is an eggshell piece of perfection. It doesn’t really make me laugh, but not because it’s without humour; it just goes beyond guffaws and takes the comic absurdity of existence to a different plane. When I watch it, I find myself holding my breath, for various reasons – perhaps because I’m wincing, or cringing, or hoping that a tentative connection has been made. Sometimes it’s bleak, even sinister, sometimes it’s almost repellent in its reflection of human frailty, and other times it’s innocent and joyous, but everything is delivered with a lightness of touch, blown in on a gentle Hythe sea breeze.
Daisy plays Miri, back to her seaside hometown after serving 18 years in prison. I’m not as ‘streetwise’ as police commissioner Philip Allott would like, but even I know a sentence that lengthy suggests she did something serious. However, her crime is so obliquely referred to for the first few episodes, that I found myself wondering if it ever existed at all. Maybe it was all some kind of metaphor for womanhood? We do have to apologise a lot, and a lot of people hate us. It didn’t seem outside the realms of possibility that the local reaction to Miri’s return is simply based on her gender - the audacity of going away, and returning; coming and going at will. But no; she did do something really bad, we learn, though it’s more complex than it seems.
Miri moves back in with her parents, who promptly hide the knives. Her mother is played by the glorious Geraldine James, who did such sterling work as Marilla Cuthbert in the Netflix series Anne with an E. I never thought I could love a Marilla as much as I loved the one in the original and best Megan Follows adaptation, but James made the role her own – stern, repressed and soft as an old quilt. On the surface, as Miri’s mother Caroline, she’s not a million miles away from Miss Cuthbert; rather austere, and buttoned up - but then, on occasion, compelled to unbutton in the most inappropriate way. I want to avoid spoilers, so suffice it to say she’s got a sexual side hustle that’s exceptionally ill-advised. Her husband Oscar, Miri’s father, has his own issues, telling a young mother in the doctor’s surgery about his two grandchildren, who don’t exist, because his only daughter’s been in prison since she was a teenager.
It would be difficult to imagine a more unlikely killer than Miri. Her demeanour is meek and gentle, tousled head dipping as she flashes a wide, rueful smile. She’s sweetly out of touch after nearly two decades of incarceration, desperate for a job, any job, and even at her most defiant, in the face of the doctor’s receptionist ‘computer says no’ line, she’s instantly contrite. How could she have committed this horrendous crime, whatever it was? It’s the constant itch of this unusual series; the urge to find out exactly what happened up on the sea-cliff that night. Her former best friend Mandy obviously knows, yet their estrangement is not due to that, but because Mandy never visited or contacted Miri in jail. I love the scenes between Miri and Mandy – the bristling chemistry between them, a hostility that longs to dissolve back into friendship. God, I want them to be friends again. I want Miri’s job at the fish and chip shop to work out. I want her awkward, ingenuous relationship with Billy, the carer next door, to blossom. I want her to find joy, and freedom, and absolution. But will that change, when I know the full details of what she did?
I don’t know, but I do know I’m sick of women always being in the wrong, always to blame. We’re paying our debt to society the whole fucking time. In this beautiful, desolate, yet weirdly empowering series, the woman is the villain, and yet she gets to be the hero too. She’s paid her dues, and now she’s allowed to find pockets of happiness. Allowed to have a go at getting her life back.
Like Miri and Billy putting their arms up on the fairground ride, it’s a cheering image.
- Back to Life, 2 series, BBC One
