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Love, Lies and Records is the latest Kay Mellor drama to hit TV screens and sees Ashley Jensen in a welcome return from the US to star in a UK series.
The rather wordy, alliterative and forgettable title relates to the fact that, as Kate, she works in the Births, marriages and deaths department of her local council. She’s also looking for promotion, but disgruntled colleague and stuck-in-the-mud Judy (Rebecca Front) wants, instead, to remind her of a situation she would like to forget, which might scupper her chances.
Throw in a bit of “this episode’s main plot” with a terminally ill woman in a hospice who wants to get married, plus the start of a story arc for the series where James (Mark Stanley) is transitioning from a man to a woman, and some comedy where it begins with Kate reporting to cops about a potential burglar, with the authorities delaying things forever, so, she tells them to never mind, since she’ll just use her husband’s gun…(!)
However, Kate is quite rude when dealing with customers who she believes is lying, which wouldn’t happen in the civil service; and what on earth were Kate and James doing staking out customer’s houses after hours when it would be their fraud department doing that? Don’t these two ever sleep? Are they the new Robocop?
Maybe I’m expecting too much from a drama, but I was never enticed by Kay Mellor’s In The Club (I have no intention of siring a child), The Syndicate and other of her programmes. Still, you’ve got to give them a go sometime, but this fits squarely in the position of “TV for women”. You’d think maybe there was something for men, but no – unless they have a penchant for cardboard cut-out characters, with all their paths crossing way too often like a soap opera.
Love, Lies and Records continues next Thursday on BBC1 at 9.00pm, and is available to pre-order on DVD ahead of its release on December 26th. If you missed it, you can watch it on BBC iPlayer for 30 days after transmission, and click on the packshot for the full-size version.
Episode 1 Score: 2/10
Director: Dominic Leclerc
Producer: Yvonne Francas
Writer: Kay Mellor
Music: Nick Lloyd Webber
Cast:
Kate: Ashley Jensen
Rob: Adrian Bower
Judy: Rebecca Front
Rick: Kenny Doughty
Tom: Rhys Cadman
Dominica: Katarina Cas
Kristina: Gaja Filac
Talia: Mandip Gill
Lara: Maja Juric
Elle: Gracie Kelly
Matthew: Matthew Marsh
Amir: Noof McEwan
Liam: Kaya Moore
Lucy: Lily Pickering
James: Mark Stanley
Zoe: Mollie Winnard
May Ling: Daphne Cheung
Simon Armitage: James Burrows
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.