Up In Town is remarkable. Joanna Lumley gives a perfect, precise, careful performance as Maddie, divorced and lonely. As she applies her daily make-up and arranges her hair, she muses on life and on her current situation, and reveals far more than she realises.
Drawing obvious comparisons with Alan Bennett's incredible Talking Heads series of monologues, Up In Town allows the viewer to get under the skin of the character, and left me wanting more. The stillness and calm that Maddie displays, even when explaining how she accidentally walked out on her husband, allow the viewer to focus on her story with greater clarity.
Some laugh-out-loud moments, such as choosing clothes that were the height of fashion 30 years ago in order to make herself look glamorous and svelte when she greets the rat catcher, temper the real sadness in other sequences. The final episode's sequence about Maddie's son left me with a genuine lump in my throat.
Short and sharp, these six little ten-minute bursts will leave you eager for more, and reveal so much about Joanna Lumley. Not just the glamour girl, action heroine or OTT comedy star; she's capable of so much more. The intensity and emotion on show in Up In Town is perfect.
Drawing obvious comparisons with Alan Bennett's incredible Talking Heads series of monologues, Up In Town allows the viewer to get under the skin of the character, and left me wanting more. The stillness and calm that Maddie displays, even when explaining how she accidentally walked out on her husband, allow the viewer to focus on her story with greater clarity.
Some laugh-out-loud moments, such as choosing clothes that were the height of fashion 30 years ago in order to make herself look glamorous and svelte when she greets the rat catcher, temper the real sadness in other sequences. The final episode's sequence about Maddie's son left me with a genuine lump in my throat.
Short and sharp, these six little ten-minute bursts will leave you eager for more, and reveal so much about Joanna Lumley. Not just the glamour girl, action heroine or OTT comedy star; she's capable of so much more. The intensity and emotion on show in Up In Town is perfect.