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ET26.6 This episode is such fun · The Downing Arts Podcast

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Welcome to the downing arts podcast.
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It's been another quiet week as exams continue, but there was a moment of
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sparkle on Sunday at Evensong when five brass players joined the chapel, choir and congregation
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for an epic rendition of the final hymn.
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I'm joined by our Graham Robertson Research fellow this week, Dr.
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Rachel Coombs. Welcome, Rachel. Thanks, Louisa. Good to be back. Yeah.
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It's been just over a year since you were on the show. What have you
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been up to in that time? Gosh, many, many things.
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I would think that the main thing I've been doing is my
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book manuscript, which is now complete and
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I think I might have mentioned this before, but I've been looking specifically at an
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artist called Maurice Denis, French artist working in the
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early 20th century in France. And my book is essentially
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looking at his decorative work, so his large scale works for churches,
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for the theater. And I've been thinking about his relationship
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with musicians. So that's been a
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long project that's, as you can imagine, occupied a lot of my time and
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alongside that I've had the chance to write a few articles, attend conferences,
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all the, all the sorts of things that are, that fellows are expected to
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be doing. Excellent. And your History of Art fellows, is that
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right? Yes, exactly. Yes, I'm the Graham Robertson fellow, as you mentioned, in History of
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Art and I look mainly at late 19th,
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early 20th century French visual and musical culture.
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I'm a big fan of music, but that's not what
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I'm here to talk about. But I certainly could. Yeah, well, I know, I know
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you're into jazz especially. I know we've talked about that previously,
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so. Yeah. Have you been, been to any, any good concerts recently
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or got any exciting things coming up? Yes, so I've been to.
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I've been to quite a few things, so I. It's really exciting that
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in the last kind of four or five years, jazz has
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sort of become cool again, I think. Oh, it always slightly lost its
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kind of, you know, intellectual sort of heaviness and
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it's become a bit of a kind of playground for lots of genres to come
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together. So last week I went to Ronnie Scott's, the jazz club
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in London, and I saw this really cool guy called Joseph
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Tawadros who is an Australian Egyptian
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oud player. Now you wouldn't think of the oud
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and Middle East Eastern music as jazz, but what he does is he blends a
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lot of genres. There was even a bit of bluegrass in there and
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he's sort of half, half comedian, half musician. So half
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the set was him, you know, riffing with the audience, telling bad jokes,
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and then he would say, okay, that joke fell flat. I'm gonna pick up the
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Ood and start playing. So that was really fun.
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I've been to a few things in Cambridge. There's a new venue called
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the Cambridge Arts Club, which is championing jazz.
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I saw a tuba player there called Theon Cross. I don't
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know if you're familiar with his, so he's super,
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super cool. I would definitely recommend checking him out. So he's trying to turn the
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tuba into an instrument that doesn't just kind of anchor the bass of the
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orchestra. So. So, yeah, there's a lot of
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funk going on. There's a lot of influence from bass music,
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from darp, from grime. So, yeah, he's a really cool artist.
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And just one thing that I'm really excited about
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is that the French Lebanese trumpeter Ibrahim Malouf is playing
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in Cambridge on 13 June. Again, he's a kind of crossover Middle
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Eastern jazz artist. I'm hoping to
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do an interview with him either this week or next for UK Jazz News.
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Just trying to figure out a date. But if anyone is around on 13
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June, I would get yourself to the Corn Exchange because it's going to be
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a really, really interesting gig. Well, of course, lots of,
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lots of things and stuff going on. No, no, no, no, Absolutely.
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It's. No, it's good to. Good to hear everyone's different interests.
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So I've been looking forward to this conversation for ages. Me too.
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We're going to be talking about your favorite TV show, which is Miranda
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H. So why
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is it your favorite TV show? So I think,
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I suppose if I was to nuance that I would say it's one of my
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favorite TV shows, because when it came out,
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which was. Was it 2009, I think the first series came
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out, something like that. Yeah, I think it was. But I just remember
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there was loads of like, really good comedy shows happening around that
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time, like Green Wing, Black Books,
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IT Crowd. So there are a lot of comedies and like
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British sitcoms during the Miranda period that I would say
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are fully up there with Miranda. But there is something particular about Miranda and
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I think is that is the kind of relatable quality of
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the character. So, as you know,
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obviously, because you're a massive fan too, but for anyone
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who doesn't know Miranda is this sort of clumsy,
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slightly socially awkward woman in her 30s,
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she feels like she's always being harangued by her family and her
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friends to sort of fit in with society and act normal.
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But she struggles to get to grips with exactly
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what normality is. And I think that's partly what the show is about, that even
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the characters that are trying to get her to be normal are absolutely
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absurd in their own right. And then doesn't her mother have an obsession
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with her getting married? That's a big. Yes,
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exactly. And her mother is such a social climber,
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so her mother will. Will say, oh, darling, you've got an invitation
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to the Henley Regatta. Just so you know,
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the laugh this season is based on. What was it
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based on? Barbie Girl by Aqua.
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There's another one later in a later series, isn't there, which is
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equally bizarre. Oh, I can't remember what it is. I think there's Katy Perry,
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isn't there? Oh,
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Wow. So did you watch it when it first came out? Yes.
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So I would have been terrifyingly. I would have been an undergrad.
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I just checked. It did come out in 2009. So I
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think it was particularly significant for me, that was.
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I think it was the first TV show that I really watched and took seriously
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because I grew up without a tv, so I never watched any of the shows.
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I don't know, Neighbors, Friends, Coronation street, all the soaps and things that my
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friends watched. I didn't, you know, I just didn't watch them. But then
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I got to university and there was the birth of iplayer, which changed
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my life because Miranda is on the BBC. And I got into it,
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I suppose there was this sense that, right, I need to, you know, make up
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for all the years that I've had without a tv, so let's plunge myself
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into anything and everything. And I think,
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as students can appreciate, obviously being an undergrad is intense.
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It's stressful at times. It's a lot of fun, you know, meeting people,
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being with friends. But sometimes you just need some escapism and you need a bit
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of time to watch something kind of warm,
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unserious, friendly and essentially
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quite uncomplicated. So I think Miranda filled
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that need for me, for sure, because I think. I don't know what you think
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about this, Louisa, but I think it's not sort of
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trying to, you know, give across a deeper message. It's. There's no
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kind of moral complexity, really. It is sort of pure escapism,
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I suppose. It's. Yeah, I mean, it's. It's very silly, isn't it? I mean,
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I know when I first saw it, yeah, around the time it came out.
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And I remember watching it and. And Thinking. Just thinking.
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It was. It was just ridiculous. It was just silly. It was just, you know,
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and. And it. Yeah. But I have to say, now that I am of a
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similar age to. To her, it's like, oh, my word,
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I can totally relate to all of this. And it's just rapidly become an
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obsession. Yeah, it's. It's so true. I think when I was 19,
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I would. I could relate to it. And now that I'm Also in my 30s,
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I can equally relate to it. I think there is that general thing, the sort
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of farcical nature of it. Yeah. And the sort of gently taking apart
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the sort of, I don't know, people's idiosyncrasies
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and the way in which everyone feels a bit socially awkward and doesn't know what
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to say at times. That is a kind of universal thing, that it's very apparent
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when you're in your teens, and it's very apparent when you're, you know, in your
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30s. Maybe it's apparent later in life, middle age as well. You know.
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Hopefully we'll find out it's just a human condition.
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Yeah. I think for me as well, like, a lot of the reason
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it appeals is because she does and says a lot of things that I
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think we all possibly secretly want to do but just don't, because it's not sort
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of appropriate in society. I mean, I know there's one episode, the beginning, when she's.
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She's just standing in a shop window like a. Like a sort of mannequin,
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and then someone walks past and she kind of moves and scares them, and it's
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just. It's so stupid, but it's just so funny. And also the slapstick when
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she. You know, when she shoves Stevie off the. Off the stool and things,
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it's. Yeah, exactly. You know, you could never. It would never be acceptable
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to do that. No. No. But I think that physical aspect,
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the kind of physical comedy, which I don't. I haven't seen many comedies
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recently that really have that aspect or kind of. Or in
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a particularly heightened way. But I think with Miranda, it is so reliant on.
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On her kind of clumsiness. I remember. I think it's series two,
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when she's having a meal with a friend in Yo. Sushi, and, you know,
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they have those little conveyor belts, the tiny sushi plates, and then she gets her
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necklace caught in the conveyor belt, and it kind of drags her onto the conveyor
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belt, and then she's trying to make herself small as if she's a sushi plate.
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But you know, Obviously she's over 6 foot and it's just, it was
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one of those kind of really laugh out loud absurd moments. I remember
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another thing that I think that really struck me and I thought I'd
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never seen this before. It turns out it's not an original
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sort of comedy trick. But that's when she, she kind of breaks the fourth wall
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and she looks directly at the camera and it's as if we're
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sort of complicit in her inner monologue and she'll,
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she'll say something out loud and she'll realize that it's utterly ridiculous and she'll just
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look at the camera and just say, why? You know, why did I say that?
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And we all have those moments when we're just like, oh my goodness, why did
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I say that? But it's that kind of sharing with the audience which,
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which I think is really powerful. So I think,
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I mean, I described it as kind of escapism, but actually that isn't right.
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It's because, I mean, what it isn't is getting
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us completely away from our lives. It is about kind of drilling down and making
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us recognize sort of the absurdity of social interactions at
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times. But in a way that's, you know, there's no pressure because we're kind
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of laughing at her. And she gets herself into the most ridiculous situations
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as well. I mean, like when she's in the, in the hotel or when
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she says, oh, I'm, you know, that's it, I'm going to go to Thailand on
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holiday and then ends up in the hotel around the corner which has a picture
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of Thailand on the wall. And then she gets mistaken for somebody else and
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then ends up delivering a seminar. But she just sort of, it's so believable,
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you know, there's like no opportunity for her to kind of extract herself from this
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situation. Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, each episode has some
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kind of a premise, right? So it will start. There's the episode in series
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two. I think it's episode two where she gets a call
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or she gets a voicemail saying,
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oh gosh, can you come to this funeral at 2:30? But she misses the name
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of the person who's died and she goes to the funeral and,
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and she still doesn't. She knows it's a family member because it's all her like
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distant cousins and things there. And she's asked to give a eulogy even though she
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doesn't know who's died. And so that's the kind of beginning of the episode,
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and then she becomes obsessed with her own mortality and,
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you know, thinking, oh, I've done nothing worthy in life. And she asks
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her friends, you know, what would you say in my eulogy? And her friends say,
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sweaty but nice. And then. And it kind
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of continues, and then it grows into this whole thing about her search for
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meaning, and she tries all sorts of different things and then somehow it
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ends up with her in the library, like accidentally reading Mein Kampf to
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a group of children. You think, how did we get here? Yeah.
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But it's all perfectly plausible in a kind of completely bizarre
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sort of way. Yeah, yeah. And is that the episode where
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she. There's Stevie, who's her assistant
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in the joke shop that she runs, pulls her up on the fact that her
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ones and sevens look very similar or something, and then she gets
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brought Meals on Wheels and eventually it transpires that they'd
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misread her birthday or something. Yes, exactly. And then
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the council put her age at 96 or something. Yeah,
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she can't go in a parachute jump. It's all. Yeah, there's. I feel like so
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much is packed into each episode. It's sort of.
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Yeah, it's really hard to kind of describe an episode as a whole
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because there's all these little sort of tangents and even subplots involving her
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friends. And I suppose there is the. There is the overarching
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plot across the three series, which is to do with her love
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interest, who is called Gary. Yeah. I don't know about you,
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but I. For me, that's sort of the least interesting aspect
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of the show. I feel like that's there in order to spread, create some kind
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of narrative and have a bit of a framework. But I think people are more
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invested in her kind of daily moments and the daily scrapes that she gets into.
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I mean, she has another love interest, doesn't she? Mike? Is it Mike?
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Yes. Yeah. And she. Just one
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of my favourite bits. I mean, again, it's utterly stupid and completely
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juvenile and childish, but when they're walking in the countryside
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and they're sitting on a gate and he climbs off the gate to look
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at a bird or something, and the gate sort of swings and then she ends
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up falling off. And, you know, I mean, it's just really silly, but it's
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just very funny, as you say, it's something about her kind of. Her sort of
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physicality. I mean, she's very tall, you know, she's sort of slightly clumsy,
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and it's just. She really does Send herself up. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
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But I think ultimately, while we are obviously laughing at her and
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her silliness, I feel like she always kind of subtly has the last laugh
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because she always manages to get herself or to rise
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above the various scrapes she gets into, to rise above the insults that
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she gets. And obviously I won't, you know, say what happens right at the end,
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but, you know, there's a happy ending,
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so it doesn't feel, you know, there's. Yeah, there's no kind of cruelty
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to it. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Although I suppose we should caveat
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that obviously this. This was 2009, that the first series came out,
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and as with all comedy, things do age. I think
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series one, episode one is. I think we would call that a little bit problematic
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now. And maybe if people want to go in and watch it, don't take the
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flavor of episode one. That's the general flavor of the show.
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Do you have a favorite episode? I do think the one where she's meditating
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on her. On her own mortality and wants to do something useful. So the
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one that starts with the funeral, I think that is really good. There's also another
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one in series two where she ends up in a therapist's office with her mum.
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Oh, yeah. And the series. The episode title is Just Act
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Normal, which I think encapsulates the whole show.
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And it's just three characters. It's a therapist,
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it's her mom, who's played by Patricia Hodge, who.
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Yeah, amazing actress. Just.
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And it is all. It's all about the weird dynamic between the two of them,
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about the mum, who's just so desperately concerned that Miranda
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doesn't say anything wrong and sort of pretends to be a normal, upright social
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being, but actually what we
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see is how absurd the mum is and how Miranda has come to be the
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way she is because of the kind of the ridiculous pressure that is put on
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her. So maybe that's. That's a slightly more kind of nuanced,
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psychologically deep episode. As deep as
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it gets. As deep as it gets. But her mother is always
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sort of underneath everything is always, like, really supportive. Like in that episode,
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there are a few sort of, I don't know, logistical mishaps,
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and they do work together to try and. Because sort
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of as a pair, they don't want to be seen as weird or, you know,
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whatever. Yeah, so that's always quite interesting. Then,
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of course, her mother has all these catchphrases like, you know what I call such
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fun. Such fun. And Miranda laughs as much
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as her mum is sort of is mean to Miranda. Miranda is, you know,
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horrendously mean to her mom. Do you remember when her mom runs for counselor and
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her campaign is based around things like MNS, M&S on the NHS,
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tracksuits and Waitrose, et cetera. And,
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you know, just the way she absolutely slates her mother for being involved,
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you know, for these being her priorities in life. Yeah. There's another
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character as well who is worth mentioning, that's Tilly,
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who is one of Miranda's friends.
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And I remember her really strongly because some of her idiosyncrasies.
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So she. She's the kind of person that says Holly Bobs instead of Holiday and,
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like, Brillo pads instead of brilliant. Yeah. And I
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knew. I think. I mean, I was a bit guilty of that kind of thing
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at times, but I definitely knew. People just indulge in, like, slightly annoying ways
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of saying things like that. I could really. I could. You know,
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I can think of a thing. And I think, again, there is
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that thing of kind of. Each of these characters, however absurd they are, there is
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an element of kind of realism in the way that they comport
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themselves and their mannerisms. I mean, I think my
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favorite episode is probably the one where she
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is babysitting or looking after the
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child of one of Gary's friends or two of Gary's friends.
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And she ends up in the play center and they're singing Old
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MacDonald and she's put on the spot, come up with an animal. So she comes
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up with dolphin, and then makes the most extraordinary noise.
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I don't know how she does it. And then, of course, all the children get
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scared. And then she puts her back out on the slide or something and
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then ends up in a sort of chiropractor's office.
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And then she. Well, I just want to spoil, you know, too much of it
18:58
for anyone who wants to go watch it. But, you know, she. She farts and
19:01
it blows out the candle. And, you know, it's just so stupid. And then.
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And then that. That the. The dinner party that the episode ends with is
19:10
just. I mean, her mum gets a little bit, you know, a little bit drunk,
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and. And it's just. It's just unbelievably hilarious. I mean,
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it's just so funny, but kind of. It is quite clever.
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But also. Yeah, again, just really silly because they will end up having a sort
19:25
of foam fight at the end. And then Miranda,
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you know, stands up and says, actually, you know, if I'm expected to behave as
19:33
an adult, it's actually really boring. I'd rather just be fun. And I mean she
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puts it way better than that. But it's just this kind of, it does encapsulate
19:41
the whole sort of actually, you know, being an adult is,
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it's actually quite hard and you know. Yeah. It's not,
19:49
not for me. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. But then. Exactly. And she kind of has
19:52
the last laugh because she realizes actually, no, I don't have to be ridiculous and
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be like my mom and fit in. Yeah, exactly. I can bumble through life and
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actually things, things turn out okay. And so.
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Yeah, fine. There is a, there is a message in it. Yeah.
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Wow. Well, yeah, we, we could easily talk all day about
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Miranda. Carry on. Yeah, we probably will later.
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But yeah, we should, we should probably call a hole. But yeah, as I said,
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I've been looking forward to this conversation for ages. Miranda is just. Yeah. It's one
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of my go to sort of, you know, if I've had a difficult day or
20:24
something. Highly recommend. Yeah. Thank you for coming and
20:29
talking about it. Thank you. Thanks so much for having me. It was good to
20:37
This week in college, things are still quiet, but there's still even song on Sunday
20:41
with music by Samuel Arnold and Amy Beach. And on Monday everyone is welcome to
20:45
come along to the music office at 6pM to spend half an hour belting out
20:49
your favorite Disney tunes. Further afield in Lincoln, on Wednesday,
20:52
10 June, alumnus Declan Hickey will be performing as part of a guitar duo.
20:56
Further details in the show notes. That's it for this week.
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Thanks for listening.