This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine.
It’s that time of year, when thoughts invariably turn to pastures exotic. When, programmed to forget queues at the airport and arriving at your destination at midnight without teabags, we go seeking adventure, emotional transformation, spiritual enlightenment or, at the very least, an ice cream in the sun. So Two Weeks in August serves as a timely reminder: all that glistens under the Aegean sky is not gold.
Man-made disaster in God’s own paradise is nothing new. Long before Michael White’s award-winning White Lotus series turned it into a franchise, Somerset Maugham delighted in the French Riviera’s paradox of “a sunny place for shady people”, while Agatha Christie explored the same theme with A Caribbean Mystery, Death on the Nile and my fave, Evil Under the Sun – especially Jane Birkin’s beachwear advice, “Don’t forget your bathing cap.”
It’s easy to see why authors, film-makers and TV producers all land on the conceit of a group of troubled people being thrown together somewhere beautiful. Holidays give everyone time to reflect, always a guarantee of imminent upheaval. The pressure to feel deeply happy, or at least fortunate, in such an idyll conjures up its own demons.
And, of course, there’s the intense claustrophobia of it all. No human is equipped to spend that many hours in collective hedonism when their ideal evening is the solitary splendour of a takeaway and Midsomer Murders. I’m sure I speak for everyone…
Someone described Two Weeks in August to me as “White Lotus on a BBC budget” and, for sure, there are some very familiar aspects: a group of relatively wealthy holidaymakers (even the poorest isn’t dodging gunfire or filling in a food voucher) descend on a Grecian island where, you won’t be surprised to learn, they soon discover that they can’t escape themselves.
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In this version, it’s a group of university friends now in their 40s, plus various partners and children.
Writer Catherine Shepherd has great fun playing with some grotesque, very familiar clichés: vain actor Solomon (Nicholas Pinnock) making a big show of “turning off his phone” only to spend the next day recording an audition tape; French nanny Léa (Florence Banks), far more interested in distracting the adults than tending to her bairns; glamorous singleton Nat (Leila Farzad) competing for the attention of her gay bestie Jacob (Hugh Skinner) with his irritatingly confident on-off boyfriend… hell is other people, and they’re all in this villa.
We don’t need them dressed up as ancient gods for an impromptu bacchanalian romp halfway through to get the message – people have always behaved badly and always will.
But despite such universal, timeless elements, I’m enjoying Two Weeks… best when it plays to our singularly British hang-ups. How familiar is that sinking feeling when someone brightly suggests, “I thought we’d do a kitty. Everyone sticks in, what, 200 Euros for now?” For now?
And Jessica Raine is on fire as harangued wife Zoe, doing her best to keep smiling even while her depressed husband Dan (Damien Molony) complains, “Nothing fun ever happens when someone says it’ll be fun.” Her Doctor Foster dinner-table moment is hard-earnt and thrilling.
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The series also brings some lessons for any groups thinking of flying away ensemble this summer: don’t go on holiday with anyone a lot wealthier, or less wealthy, than you; don’t take aromatic substances with your friend’s attractive wife or, if you do, don’t climb up to the roof together to look at the moon; don’t accept any invitation from an over-friendly couple you keep bumping into at the market, it won’t end well.
Oh, and one more thing – don’t forget your bathing cap.
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