PICK OF THE WEEK
MY FAMILY: THE MEMOIR by David Baddiel
4th Estate
How can one not love a book that includes the following sentence? “The writing of a story about a boundaryless mother who flaunted her infidelity in front of all and sundry, including her children, might suggest an intense and difficult drama, but frankly, the gravitas of that tone is scuppered the moment you have to include the phrase ‘golfing memorabilia’.”
David Baddiel, comedian, television presenter and acclaimed author of Jews Don’t Count, here ushers us through a psychological door to behold his family background and upbringing – warts and all. What makes the experience so compelling is not only his comic gifts (name me another book in which the footnotes are funny), but his inability, as “a self-proclaimed honesty addict” , to conceal or embellish often painful memories.
My Family is, at its heart, a portrait of a marriage: the dysfunctional relationship between his mother, Sarah, and father, Colin. The former was born into a German Jewish family wealthy enough to own a Rubens and was constantly compensating for the glamorous life that history had denied her – principally, by conducting a long affair with a golfing memorabilia merchant called David White. She, too, entered this niche market and wrote several books on golf.
Baddiel’s account of her cc-ing him and his brother, Ivor, into a passionate email to the other David ought to be shocking. But you are too busy laughing to clutch your metaphorical pearls (or indeed your real ones). And this is central to Baddiel’s purpose: he believes that “the truth is always complex”, that people are too, and that remembrance of this sort is not the same as vengeance. He prefers to categorise whatever damage he suffered as “accidental sculpture”: a beautiful coinage.
As for his father, a brilliant scientist who ended up selling Dinky toys (his celebrity customers including Julian Cope and Michael Barrymore), Baddiel’s recollections are simultaneously loving, exasperated and hilarious. Colin was aggravated by almost everything and spectacularly rude. This was difficult for his family, but also, as his son recalls, often very funny.
The account of the noise his father made while approaching orgasm is one of the comic highlights of the book (“The only person who I think might make a similar sound to accompany sexual ecstasy is Chewbacca”).
Meanwhile, Baddiel’s account of Colin’s dementia and its impact upon the rest of the family is a model of candour, making no attempt to hide the psychological shrapnel that such conditions spray around them. My Family is his finest writing to date.
STREAMING
SPENT
All episodes, iPlayer
When Mia (Michelle de Swarte) is told by her US accountant that she faces bankruptcy – having spent $36,500 on brunch and more than $14,000 on crystals – she replies: “You’ve got to spend the poverty out of your system, do you know what I mean? Like, to celebrate.”
The premise of this six-part comedy, written by de Swarte herself and loosely based on her own modelling career, is straightforward. Faced with unpayable debts, she heads back to the UK and what she assumes is still her home.
But the welcome she receives is not what she hoped for. Her best friend and former lover Jo (Amanda Wilkin) is now engaged. Her father Teddy (Karl Collins) walks barefoot in the park with feathers in his hair. Her mother Chrissy (Juliet Cowan), is suffering from mental illness but has taken in a neglected teenager, Ella (Eleanor Nawal), who delivers the following withering judgment when she meets Mia: “You talk like a kid, but not like a kid from, like, today”.
Spent is as good as it is because of de Swarte’s magnificent performance. She dares to present Mia as self-absorbed, irresponsible and unlikeable; which makes her incremental, imperfect and provisional embrace of ordinary family life – notably a party she throws for Ella – all the more compelling.
The series ends on something of a cliffhanger. I hope there will be more.
STREAMING
SUNNY
Apple TV+
Suzie Sakamoto (Rashida Jones, superb), an expat American in Kyoto, is in mourning for her husband Masa (Hidetoshi Nishijima) and their son Zen, lost in an air crash. A man claiming to be a colleague of Masa delivers a “homebot”, Sunny (voiced by Joanna Sotomura), as a condolence gift; and reveals that her husband did not design refrigerators, as Suzie thought, but worked in advanced robotics.
Initially, she cannot abide Sunny’s crass intrusion in what remains of her life, but is quickly made curious about Masa’s work and his fate – not least because the homebot uses gestures that were part of their intimate communication as a couple.
In flashback, we discover that they were drawn together by their shared experience of – and intermittent preference for – solitude: in his youth, it transpires, Masa lived for a while as a hikikomori, a shut-in who refuses to engage with society.
Suzie, for her part, is naturally spiky and introverted, and takes a while to relax in the company of Sunny and bartender Mixxy (played by singer-songwriter annie the clumsy), as she dives into the tech underworld where “code dealers” hack homebots so they can perform illicit functions. Recommended.
