Bouquet Of Barbed Wire: New Statesman review

Good review for Bouquet Of Barbed Wire in the New Statesman (read the full review on the website).

...Nevertheless, I found the first part unexpectedly unsettling. Why? The thought occurs to me that it was simply guilt that made me feel anxious. It is just so unusual these days to see a television drama about the rich, well-spoken, metropolitan middle classes. We're not supposed to care about such people any more, let alone to find their crises - our darling daughter would rather have a baby by her lover than go to university! - dramatic or involving. Watching these characters act them out feels more illicit than watching porn.

It's no wonder that Andrews has felt it necessary to throw class war into the mix. In the original series, Prue's lover, Gavin, was American. Now, he's a working-class Yorkshireman with a council flat in Hackney, his presence in the family stoking not only Peter's obsessive sexual jealousy, but his fear and self-loathing, too. (Gavin is Other but he is also, for Peter, a reminder of a world left long behind.)

It's also going to make his imminent attraction for Cassie - assuming that Andrews leaves this plot twist intact - rather more Mellors-like than if he was just some Updike-reading PhD. Suffice to say, I'm finding the whole schlocky show pleasingly spicy. You could almost say I feel 13 again. Call me trashy, but if this is ITV coming slowly back to life, I'm all for it.