TV Pick of the Week: Channel 4’s ‘Glue’
It’s been just over four years since I moved to London, and I’ve made a few notes regarding what I’ve learned since my arrival. Number one: it’s not as big as I expected. Number two: hearing another Northerner sends my clipped Cumbrian dialect into overdrive. And Number three: the idea of having a cosmopolitan, big-city life is a bit of a double-edged sword, because you feel obliged to aspire to it, but at the same time you hate yourself for trying to be part of it.
Case in point: I recently suggested to a friend that we get a coffee and walk through a park, which was met by bemusement on his end.
“Why don’t we have the coffee inside?”
“Well, I thought it would be nice to go for a walk.”
“Do people do that?”
“Yes, they do, I saw it on a TV show. They seamlessly talked about their love lives, too, and one of them had a catchphrase.”
Anyway, it went down like a lead balloon. The idea of framing the most basic facets of human existence with gilded edges doesn’t gel with most of the people who actually live in the cities that are romanticised, so I’ve come to the conclusion that the fault lies directly with the TV shows we watch which teach us to aspire to be feckless yuppies. Girls, SATC, Looking, I’m looking at you.
This is why I’m excited about this week’s TV pick, Glue. Glue is the latest E4 drama to get people like me mashing their keyboards excitedly, and I think it’s partly because the tractor-infested fields which the show is based around are a nice antidote to the hip gin distilleries that are popping up everywhere in London and other big cities.
When the body of a local teenage boy is found under the wheels of a tractor in the quiet (and fictional) village of Overton, the lives of his friends are thrown into the spotlight and suddenly come under more scrutiny than they can handle.
So far, so Broadchurch. But the young cast, nonchalance regarding class A drugs and inclusion of a Rizzle Kick give the show a vibrant, Skins-esque feel. It’s also written by Jack Thorne, who “penned” episodes of This Is England and based the show on his life growing up in Berkshire.
This show is about young people. Not perpetual interns, rose-tinted romantics drinking Wahaca cocktails or the easily-unlikeable city-types, but people who nick cars, pop pills and play chicken on top of a silo.
It’s got murder, a bit of bite, and a few horses to boot. And, given that my commute took just under two hours this morning and I’ve already had two meals in Pret A Manger, the notion of ditching it and fleeing to the countryside is hugely appealing. Even if it is soaked in blood.
Glue begins tonight (September 15) at 10pm on Channel 4. Follow Chris Mandle on Twitter @chris_mandle