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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mel O&#039;Drama" data-source="post: 254122" data-attributes="member: 23">dinnerladiesSeries Two, Part One(November-December 1999)<img src="https://www.comedy.co.uk/images/library/people/900x450/d/dinnerladies_brenda.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" />It’s struck me that this series marks the twentieth anniversary of Talent. Two decades on and Vic’s still writing up a storm and brilliantly presenting it with Julie Walters and a host of quality character actors. We’re also ten years on from the Victoria Wood series of stories (Mens Sana, etc), which I still think of as being new. The fact that both series feel contemporaneous has reminded me how timeless Vic’s series tend to be. This is very much the case with dinnerladies. The uniforms, the limited setting and the lack of location work all serve to make it quite difficult to date visually. Another reason why it stands up there as a classic that’s as accessible today as it ever was. Thankfully there are no big changes to the dynamics. All the main cast are back with no significant changes other than Bren’s shorter hairdo and Twinkle’s weight loss. In terms of supporting characters, the gang’s mostly all here, right down to Kate Robbins almost unrecognisable as the dour Babs. Norman the bread man’s been recast, but the series gets away with it. While second series is more of the same, which is all to the good, there have been a couple of changes of emphasis. The “will they/won’t they?” element of the romance between Bren and Tony feels far more heavy-handed this year. I’m not a fan of romantic stuff in general. In fictional character terms I can find romantic happiness quite nauseating. This angle was tolerable in the first series, but the second series is getting very close to that line. Not helping matters is that other characters have become a kind of Greek chorus, watching it play out and getting involved by placing bets about when they’re going to get it on and whatnot. And it feels like we as the audience are supposed to be on the same page. But I’m extremely resistant (perversely so, perhaps) and find myself getting irritated with it. And then there’s the other audience: the studio audience. On last year’s rewatch I remember that moment where Bren and Tony kissed and the audience gave out this big “ooooooooh” really annoying. It feels like watching a filmed pantomime. The audience’s engagement actually reduces my own, making me feel like I’m not part of something. Something that I appreciate (to a point) is that Bren is written as flawed. Vic’s spoken of her strained relationship with her mother and a degree of isolation within her family of origin, and that comes across in this character. There’s something about Bren that provokes a fierce loyalty in and intense interest from other characters that can be quite unattractive. Case in point, all of the colleagues willing Bren to stand up to her mother’s request for money. They weren’t wrong, but there’s something about the way in which it was done that made them seem hard and almost cruel in their dogged determination to stop her from handing over her holiday money to Petula. The situation and the public way in which it was dealt with actually increased my empathy for Petula as a lonely woman, while my empathy for Bren wavered. Bren’s choice of moment to hand over her money to Petula made complete sense. But I’d have felt more sympathy for her if everyone else hadn’t. She handed over the money when everyone was gathered round to watch her do it, thus garnering their sympathy/pity, which left me as a viewer feeling I didn’t need to invest as much of my own sympathy. It helped not that everyone was gathered to hear Stan’s beautifully simple eulogy to his father who had just died, but the beautiful moment then became about Poor Bren rather than Stan or his father who were more deserving of care at that moment in time. This angle of Bren seizing upon others’ moments of drama or difficulty in order to have her own big moment was turbocharged in the first couple of Series Two episodes in which Vic wrote a couple of lengthy spiels for Bren as she cut someone down to size. In the first, she tore into Phillipa for mixing up a scheduling error. She did so very publicly and very loudly, in front of the entire assembled staff. And she evoked the ghost of Tony’s cancer as her trump card which served to protect her from any potential comeback. In the second episode, Jean got it from Bren. Jean had invited it by being very nasty to everyone in grief over her husband leaving her. But again, Bren stepped in at the moment of highest drama and escalated it by tearing into Jean. In both cases, the writing feels as though it’s leaning towards Bren being a hero. A speaker of truth who says what others are thinking. They feel true for her character, and echo of the “tuna ’n’ sweetcorn” moment in Series One where she gave a customer a piece of her mind for daring to ask if she could have her tuna and sweetcorn separately. It’s also very much a Victoria Wood-ism. There are shades, for example, of the way she spoke up to Pam in the Over To Pam episode of Victoria Wood. Yet to me, each of these dinnerladies cases feels like they show someone who functions in a dysfunctional way. She defuses a situation by escalating the drama even more, moving herself right into the centre of it and very publicly shaming someone. She includes facts which make it difficult for the person to even attempt to defend themselves without making Bren a victim. And afterwards there is an atmosphere of uncomfortable stillness. In each case, I found myself feeling protective towards the other character and liking Bren less.  So yes, Bren is a very flawed character to me. Others may see it differently, but I find Bren to be one of the least-likeable, most subtly self-centred characters she’s played. And yet she makes perfect sense because of how well written she is. Now bearing in mind this is all Vic’s writing, it’s a complex situation and I applaud her for writing this character who I find at times unexpectedly challenging. </blockquote>

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