The Secret World of Michael Fry
Sunday Times; London; Apr 23, 2000; Sally Payne;
The Observer; London; Apr 23, 2000; Michael Holland;
Daily Mail; London; Apr 26, 2000; Peter Paterson;
The Guardian; Manchester (UK); Apr 26, 2000; Adam Sweeting;
The Times; London; Apr 26, 2000; Peter Barnard;
Sunday Times; London; Apr 23, 2000; Sally Payne;
A two-part drama, written by Paul Abbott (Cracker, The Bill, Reckless) and starring, among others, Ewen Bremner, Michael Kitchen and Robert Pugh - a pedigree that should not fail. Yet somehow, out of all the terrestrial channels so experienced in original drama, Channel 4 manages most often to either hit supremely or miss - by a millimetre. This falls into the latter category, largely by trying to be both thriller and comedy, surrealist and naturalistic. Michael Fry (Bremner) is a town planner and single father of a one- year-old baby, living in a small Welsh seaside town, where he is asked to close down a hotel on the grounds that it is breaking fire regulations. When the police turn up to help him accomplish this task, Mr Fry discovers that the hotel is covering for an internet sex den, run by a pimp (Kitchen). Having helped rescue one of the porn actresses (a plain and vulnerable Rosie Marcel), he begins an unlikely relationship with her. He also discovers that the closure of the hotel is linked to some dodgy deal being planned by his boss (Pugh), into which not only he, his porn actress and his baby have been dragged, but also his parents, whose Polish roots become ever more significant. When Tom Jones, Shirley Bassey, rugby union and male voice choirs enter the plot, there is a whiff of involvement by the Welsh tourist board: thrilling, chilling, or simply sloppy writing?
The Observer; London; Apr 23, 2000; Michael Holland;
Here we are, not even halfway through the first year of the Twentyhundreds and it's happened. When they say that The Secret World of Michael Fry (Channel 4, 9pm) is a truly original drama, it is no Nineties hyperbole. Paul Abbott's tale of sex on the Net and council corruption is truly of our time.
And it is not just the story: all the characters, subtly directed with dark and humorous abstraction by Marc Munden, are very much part of oh, what do we call them? the Noughties. And the sets? Imagine Terry Gilliam's Brazil, stripped of its childish and monstrous excess, plus Stanley Kubrick's angular meticulousness and the best of today's TV car advertising, and you get close.
Here's the deal: single parent and assistant council planning officer Michael (Ewen Bremner) has lived in his small Welsh seaside town for 27 years and loves it in a quiet, undemanding way. The baby was an accident, conceived out of naivity as much as anything; its mother, like most of the young of Llangrych, can't stand the place and he and she part when she quits town, leaving our hero holding the baby. When Michael meets Donna (Rosie Marcel), he finds the only other person who feels as he does about the tired and fading resort. But Donna is not what she seems, nor is a breach of fire regulations the real reason his boss, the capo di tutti capi of the council (Robert Pugh), asks him to enforce the closure of the old hotel where he meets her. Nor, even, is the real reason that it is run by industrious pimp Herbie (Michael Kitchen) as an Internet brothel. Oh no, there's something much more venal going on here!
This is one of those shows that, when the credits roll, you think: what a shame, I could watch another hour of that. Fortunately, you can, as this is the first of a two-parter. But don't think, right, I'll catch up next week, because if you don't watch tonight it won't make any sense at all.
Daily Mail; London; Apr 26, 2000; Peter Paterson;
A heady brew of corrupt Welsh local politics, the sex industry, single parenthood, and the lure of European Union money were all combined last night in The Secret World Of Michael Fry, Paul Abbott's intriguing new drama. Abbott is known as an innovator and a stretcher of hitherto acceptable boundaries, the author of Cracker and the recent highly praised Clocking Off.
This is both conservative as well as radical, in the sense that it is a piece full of echoes.
There's a distinct touch of Room At The Top about Mr Fry, an industrious junior planning officer - a breed reminiscent of John Braine's hero, the town hall clerk Joe Lampton, and one not often noticed by dramatists. Though it must be said that Fry is not a sexual predator like Lampton, nor nearly so ambitious. It's the job that catches the eye.
The Secret World is set in a Welsh seaside town called Llangrych that has seen better days. The photography enhances Abbott's script in an almost Hitchcockian way, by precisely capturing the peeling paint, the brave pre-war experimental architecture, the sleazy attractions on the front, and the neglected pier.
Most such seaside places in Britain have adjusted to the exodus of holidaymakers to sunnier climes by taking in a new population of social security dependants. Llangrych is clinging grimly to its tourist status despite an ever- shortening season and diminishing numbers of visitors.
Young Michael Fry, superbly played by Ewen Bremner as a bumbling innocent, is resigned to the town's genteel and gradual decline: he loves the place, and knows that it originally owed its existence not to tourism, but to some other unspecified industry - one would guess slate quarrying.
His Directorate of Planning Services in the district council is presided over by the megalomaniac Hugh Wentworth-Davies (Robert Pugh), who has grandiose plans for transforming Llangrych with EC money supplied from a lunatic-sounding Holidays at Home fund.
Fry knows nothing of this before being dispatched from the office to serve a notice to quit on hotelier Herbie Walsh (Michael Kitchen) for breaches of the fire regulations.
To his surprise, he is given a police escort, and finds that the real reason for his presence is to offer bureaucratic authority to the suppression of Walsh's internet pornography setup, supplemented by live dancers and masseuses; the council wants the site.
When his own parents receive an offer from the council to buy their seafront property for twice its value, Fry begins to smell a rat, and takes to rifling through his boss's files late at night.
Meanwhile, he has started a relationship with Donna (Rosie Marcel), a prostitute and porn actress he helped escape the hotel raid. A trailer for the second half next Tuesday - these previews are a slightly irritating new habit overtaking TV drama - has already revealed that Michael will have difficulty retaining custody of his infant son if his association with a vice girl continues.
They play rough in local politics, and Michael has already antagonised Wentworth-Davies by describing his plans for the town as 'flogging a dead horse'.
Paul Abbott's latest is an interesting and offbeat story, though some will be put off by the way most of the characters swear like specialists in the art. The sexual explicitness might also prove too much for some viewers - but I guess they've already discovered that for themselves. I'm rather looking forward to seeing how it all works out.
The Guardian; Manchester (UK); Apr 26, 2000; Adam Sweeting;
TV writers seem to believe that setting a story in Wales automatically establishes an atmosphere of primitive mystery and existential isolation. As Michael Fry puts it in The Secret Life Of Michael Fry (C4), to Donna the prostitute as she explains how she'd returned from London to Llangrych, "I never heard of anyone fighting their way back here."
But to be fair to writer Paul Abbott and director Marc Munden, The Secret Life. . . squeezes full value from its rundown but characterful seaside locations, and benefits further from an excellent cast. Ewen Bremner takes the title role of the bemused council planning officer who discovers that his bosses are planning an implausible campaign to turn Llangrych into a magnet for international tourism, with the aid of lavish EU funding. The local internet-pornographer is played by an immensely sordid Michael Kitchen, while Rosie Marcel could almost convince you that Donna is different from the lamentable cliche of the tart-with-a-heart. As Mr Wentworth-Davies, the planning supremo, Robert Pugh rants and blusters like a clockwork Mussolini.
What Abbott's script is getting at is that a lust for power is meaningless without a sense of belonging and self-worth, and he uses the petty tyrannies of local government as a revealing satiric device. The council's lunatic pretensions are rendered extra-absurd by framing them inside a vast, echoing municipal building, as Fry looks on in goggle-eyed bewilderment. Bremner is especially good at evoking the cluelessness of a divorced single father. With Polish parents and a gay brother, he's already confused enough before he meets porno-queen Donna and finds his libido spinning off the dial. But all Donna wants is somebody to talk to.
The Times; London; Apr 26, 2000; Peter Barnard;
Earlier in the evening Channel 4 transmits some of the best telly around, for example last night's The Secret World of Michael Fry, the start of a two-part drama that concludes next week.
This is a stylish piece of work, starring Ewen Bremner as Fry, a nerdy-looking town planner who gets caught up in the intrigues of a slimy pimp, brilliantly played by Michael Kitchen, who is running an Internet porn business, among other dodgy numbers.
Fry is a single parent: "I knew this year wasn't going to be ordinary. My wife left, the car started running properly ..." In between arranging babysitters and pursuing one of the girls in the porn ring, Fry discovers that his boss is involved in a planning scam.
Marc Munden's direction manages to exploit the mix of drama and black comedy without losing the balance between the two. And there are some amusing references to staples of the porn industry, as when Fry finds a spare key to his boss's office hidden inside a vibrator.
Many thanks to Deb for digging out these reviews.