Why did I dislike this programme so much? At first I put it down to the stinker of a hangover I found myself watching it through. Perhaps it was the thought that my hangover would have been easier to bear under a yolk-yellow Dordogne sun than under a glowering grey London sky, and therefore the British couples featured here who’ve made just that move caused a twinge of jealousy. But they weren’t bad company given that - on the basis of the title - I’d expected Little England to focus on the ruddy-faced lager lout variety of the Englishman abroad. So it must have been more than just that.
Well, let’s cut to the chase. It was partly these people. They just seemed so unfeasibly happy and contented; like blissed-out cats in their new-found paradise home in which every hilltop, crowned by a crumbling château, was doubly picturesque. Take Dave and Helen Mansfield. It just wasn’t credible that they really greeted every new day of switching on the fat fryer of their mobile fish and chip shop with the same degree of unbridled enthusiasm.
Dave and Helen were one of the half-dozen couples selected for this documentary from a population of some 20,000 expats in an area of south-west France nicknamed "Little England". Like all the others, they were misty-eyed about a new lifestyle made possible by cheap property prices. These were Stepford couples rather than just Stepford wives, unnervingly contented with, it seemed, neither metaphorical nor literal black clouds spoiling their utopian days.
I should point out that my chagrin at the happiness of others was not my main problem with Little England, it was the cliché-ridden voiceover. It might have looked like a good idea on paper to have Geoffrey Palmer’s world-weariness as oil to these couples’ clear and sparkly as spring water optimism and energy, but in practice it made for an awkward and grating mismatch.
When Palmer’s lugubrious, supercilious voice is combined with a passably amusing script it adds a certain light-hearted gravitas to shows such as the Grumpy Old franchise. But because there were few opportunities for him to be sarcastic, condescending and… er… grumpy, here, all we got was travelogue clichés (“fairy-tale châteaux” one minute, “majestic châteaux” the next), stating-the-obvious running commentary of what was happening on screen (“It’s the day of the wedding, and the weather’s looking positively British…”), and – the worst crime of all in my book – reiterating something that had been on the screen only a few minutes earlier, just in case we had forgotten it during the commercial break.
My only hope is that, because this is a 12-part series, some cracks will eventually appear in the various saccharine narratives and at least one couple’s majestic castle in the air will come crashing down for our viewing pleasure. Because if there aren’t at least a few rows, cash-flow problems, near divorces or business bankruptcies, you will have seen all you need to see in this first, very long half-hour.
But given that we were told at the end of this episode that later in the series farmer and butcher Ray (“You’re only as good as your last sausage”) Hicks moves into pies, and the Dordogne mobile chippy caters for “a surprise 50th birthday party”, it doesn’t look like we’re in for much high drama. As Palmer might have intoned, “If a programme that looks like it was made by the French Tourist Board is your cup of Chardonnay, this frisky little number should be right up your rue.”
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