Panic must have set in at the BBC in April. How to fill the schedules in a new world of social distancing, empty stadia and shut-up shops? Re-runs? Zoom extravaganzas? And yes, even better, monologues!
Talking Heads was the perfect lockdown solution, taking ten award-winning monologues from the 1980s and 90s, adding well-known but unoccupied actors and directors (Imelda Staunton, Tamsin Greig and Martin Freeman, amongst others), and borrowing the vacant EastEnders set. The final touch was to persuade national treasure Alan Bennett to write another two scripts – bingo! More than six hours of primetime TV.
The format of each episode is very simple. A character speaks to camera in seven or eight short scenes, often filmed in the one room or house, changes of light or costume indicating the passage of time. Gradually, a story is unfolded and secrets are revealed. Leeds is the setting for all, and frequent references to the locality, as well as precise physical detail, add to the wry humour that runs throughout, as well as to the small-world realism – isn’t this how most of our lives are constructed, and indeed how we often talk?
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