Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Charlotte Ritchie, Kiell Smith-Bynoe, Lolly Adefope, Matthew Baynton, Simon Farnaby, Martha Howe-Douglas, Jim Howick, Laurence Rickard, Ben Willbond.
Making plans and celebrating special occasions is a staple of humanity’s need for order, and Christmas is perhaps the time when those plans, carefully drawn to the minute with military like precision, are likely to come apart at the seams, fraying at the edge, causing upset and damage to the one so immersed in believing that to be perfect is the least that is acceptable.
Make plans certainly, but don’t let them dictate your life to the point where others will pass you by and feel trampled by your insistence of the idea of perfect, for before you know it the day is gone, It’s Behind You, and you are left with the fallout of just letting the day be one of low, but richly felt, expectations.
No other time of holiday seems to get under the skin of humanity than the one surrounded by cold, freezing temperatures, lack of light, uncertainty in the future, and the impulse to please people that for the rest of the year you barely talk to, let alone think of with good cheer. Yet there it is…and we make it worse by adapting the worst of our foibles, the need for gratification and greed wrapped up with a bow feigning to be full of virtue and morality.
It is in the simplicity of a tale well told that grabs the heart during such times, a visit to a pantomime perhaps, an evening of song and dance, of merriment always, but not of excess and filled with the joy of giving without the expectation of receiving more than the person may be able to afford.
You didn’t get those overpriced earrings and matching necklace, the lack of gifts resembling outrageous credit card spending, perhaps it could be argued that for some just being gifted time is enough, to spend an hour with someone working several jobs because of circumstance is a blessing, and it is to that the message behind the Christmas offering from the team behind the smash BBC comedy, Ghosts, stands firm with humour, with light, and with beauty in reason.
With Katy Wix’s character, the esteemed Mary, having departed during the latest series, the sense of sadness prevails at Button House, but in the true spirit of soldiering on, the team get together to give Alison a surprise she will adore, and in true Ghost fashion where money and physical objects are impossible to use, their display of love for the living is one of generous pleasure, a feeling that digs deep into the viewer’s hearts and leaves them dealing with the fierce nature of reminisce and melancholy, but also of true joy; and it is for that, especially in the continuation of Pat’s own story and coming to terms with his death, that the tale is one that exemplifies a truth behind the season.
We don’t need to show off, we can exist without giving in to the sadism of commercial damage, a good book, a glass of whatever takes your fancy, kind words, and giving a damn about humanity and those that have passed away in the last twelve months, those to whom we miss their influence, their smile and their love, is all that we need as the world turns back towards the light.
An excellent and poignant episode, It’s Behind You is textbook comedy made clear.
Ian D. Hall