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Nights in the Garden of Spain is the ninth of 12 episodes using the original Alan Bennett scripts but with new actors.
Tamsin Greig plays Rosemary, a housewife who’s rather unsure of herself, and is thrown into a very odd situation when neighbour Mrs McCorquodale calls her round to her house because her husband has died.
She talks about how he has no trousers on, and how his pants are on back to front. But how did he die? Did he fall and bang his head? Well, before you can say, “Hello, Jackie!”, it transpires that she shot her husband dead.
Police are called, and they’re surprised when this happened in elderley couples because “they’ve generally got it out of their system by then”, and how people usually don’t do this so early, instead wanting to get breakfast out of the way first.
Her husband is less than sympathetic, observing of the situation, “Prices are down as it is, and things like this don’t help matters”, as we get the impression that they’re looking to sell up and retire to Spain, hence the title.
After a brief, impending courtcase, what follows is just pretty slow and could’ve been summed up in about 15 minutes, causing the episode to really drag.
Nights in the Garden of Spain: Talking Heads is on BBC1 on Wednesday July 1st at 10.45pm. The series is not yet available to pre-order on Blu-ray or DVD.
However, you can also the Original Talking Heads series on DVD.
The entire series is now available on the BBC iPlayer.
Score: 4/10
Director: Marianne Elliott
Writer: Alan Bennett
Rosemary: Tamsin Greig
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.