CHRISTOPHER STEVENS reviews last night’s TV: Oh I say! Fi is far too polite to get mad even when her life collapses
Our House
Rating: 
The Peaky Blinders
Rating: 
A crippling excess of politeness is the curse of the middle classes.
The posher we get, the less able we become to stick up for ourselves. That’s why, when Covid struck, there were brawls in the aisles at Aldi and Morrisons over bumper packs of toilet rolls . . . while at Waitrose, shoppers were queuing with genteel patience in the rain.
And it’s why, when middle-class mum Fi (Tuppence Middleton) arrives home in Our House (ITV) to find all her possessions gone and another couple moving in, she barely raises her voice.
We know she’s beside herself with rage, because she does that little tut and an eye roll at Lucy and David, the awfully nice young marrieds who say they’ve bought the place.
The Real Peaky Blinders (BBC2) traced the history of the men who inspired the Beeb’s ultra-stylish costume drama (pictured)
But when Fi calls her philandering, lying ex-husband Bram (Martin Compston) to find out what’s going on and he doesn’t answer his phone, she’s almost apologetic.
She guesses at once that he has sold the property and probably forged her signature to do it. But there’s no screaming, sobbing or violence. Fi’s far too polite for that. It takes almost an hour of pursed lips and impatient sighs before she so much as thinks of calling the police.
I must be common as muck, because if I opened the door to find new people carrying their three-piece up the drive, I’d fling their own crockery at their heads until they took shelter behind their sofa. They’d call 999, I’d call 999 and we’d take it from there.
Victorian police mugshots introduced us to the Sheldons, a crew of ‘sloggers’ who wore their hard-brimmed ‘billycock’ hats down over one eye. Pictured: BBC drama Peaky Blinders
As the double-dealing husband, Compston was convincingly nasty, as he always can be when given more to say than his usual ‘Yes mate’ and ‘Right mate’ in Line Of Duty.
But Fi is simply far too nice. Even during a flashback, when she discovered Bram and a neighbour in the office at the end of the garden (and they definitely weren’t working from home) she didn’t lose her temper.
Sheer waste of the night
The pointlessness of BBC3 continues to amaze.
MasterChef Australia was the main event, a waste of airspace that usually screens on the W cable channel.
The Beeb spent £80 million relaunching Three.
What an insane use of public money.
She almost believed Bram’s wheedling: ‘It’s not what it looks like, I’m so sorry, I don’t know what happened, it was a moment of insanity.’
Our House is meant to stir our fears over the fragility of modern families. Half of marriages end in divorce and, for millions, the worst of the nightmare isn’t just the end of a relationship but the pain of watching someone else move in.
An ex’s new partner sits at the dinner table, sleeps in the master bedroom, takes the children to school and usurps every space. This drama really ought to sting those nerves.
We should be in a cold sweat at the mere suggestion that, one day, we might come home and everything that matters will be gone.
So far, this four-parter which continues tonight doesn’t have that effect. For all the melodrama, it’s far too polite. But there was nothing polite about the marauding gangs that murdered coppers and ran gambling rings on the streets of Birmingham 120 years ago.
The Real Peaky Blinders (BBC2) traced the history of the men who inspired the Beeb’s ultra-stylish costume drama.
Victorian police mugshots introduced us to the Sheldons, a crew of ‘sloggers’ who wore their hard-brimmed ‘billycock’ hats down over one eye.
When middle-class mum Fi (Tuppence Middleton) arrives home in Our House (ITV) to find all her possessions gone and another couple moving in, she barely raises her voice.
That gave them their nickname, though we weren’t told whether it also inspired the cut-throat thugs in Stanley Kubrick’s movie A Clockwork Orange — who wore their bowler hats in the same fashion.
The women looked even scarier than their menfolk. They dolled up in furs and silks to go picking pockets and shoplifting in Birmingham’s department stores.
A police historian studied a photo of one, 18-year-old Leah Jinks. ‘She looks tough as nails,’ she said. Don’t mess with the Peaky Lasses.
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