Aptly scheduled for our Great British Heatwave, writer Catherine Shepherd’s eight-part drama whisks us away to a remote Greek island, where a band of friends (four of them having been at university together) have rented an aesthetically pleasing but somewhat decrepit house for the titular fortnight. Their Greek housekeeper patiently explains that the plumbing is dangerously ancient and would they please put used toilet paper in the bin rather than trying to flush it, which prompts a few aghast sideways glances. Oh, and whatever you do, don’t drink the water.
History tells us that fictional islands very often prove to be purgatorial rather than idyllic (The Beach, Lord of the Flies, Evil Under the Sun, Shutter Island etc), and this one (which goes unnamed, though it was assembled using locations in Malta and Gozo) doesn’t disappoint. Though there’s plenty of sun, sea and sand, the landscape is harsh and barren, with barely a shrub to shelter under. Worse, our group of friends are in the main insufferable poseurs and pseuds, and Shepherd’s screenplay is forensic in the way it pokes into the cracks which soon start opening up between the characters.
The chief protagonist is Zoe, played by Jessica Raine who revels in the opportunity to accelerate through a wide range of moods, attitudes and emotions. You’ve come a long way from Call the Midwife, baby. She and her husband Dan (Damien “Bergerac” Molony) are the last to arrive at the eccentric property, which means they find themselves relegated to the worst bedroom, which un-ergonomically doubles up as the passageway to the lavatory.
Aside from their late arrival, Zoe and Dan seem to have a variety of other issues on their plate, not least a paucity of cash. When they draw another short straw and are delegated to cook the first collective evening meal for the party, they make a dash to the local shops, only to find the choices minimal yet exorbitantly priced (remember the pre-Euro days when Greece was dirt cheap?). A scraped-together mish-mash of burnt fish and a load of bones is the dismal result, tipping Dan into a spiral of self-pitiful misery. Dan’s subsequent true confessions of how he lost his business, went bankrupt and plummeted into a black hole of depression puts a bit of a downer on the evening.
However, the mood is lifted – indeed distorted and bent out of shape – by the unexpected arrival of Will (Dylan Brady). Turns out he’s the boyfriend of Jacob (Hugh Skinner), whom we might hitherto have assumed was the partner of the bossy and controlling Natalie (known as Nat), who’s a Human Resources executive back in the real world (pictured above, Skinner with Leila Farzad as Nat). For his part, Jacob earnestly informs us that he works for a charity “that raises awareness of wealth inequality”.
Will seems to be a chancer and a people-user, but he’s brought along a bottle of mushroom oil, which rapidly sends everyone into a state of blissed-out idiocy. This is largely responsible for Dan and Jess (Antonia Thomas, pictured below) – who runs a company which has released “a new organic babywear range” – getting into a bout of loved-up snogging. Unfortunately Zoe fails to see the funny side, and the episode is the catalyst for her to make a dramatic reappraisal of her life and decide she’s going to make major changes (dumping Dan, for instance).
There’s plenty to tease, tickle and titillate here, but having set up a promising shooting-gallery of characters, Shepherd allows the focus to slacken with some curious detours into Greek mythology and mysterious psychological archetypes. Zoe keeps experiencing visions of ancient-looking Greek woman – the Fates or the Furies, perhaps – and she’s been educating her young daughter about Greek myths and gods from a book she was given as a child.
This doesn’t sit comfortably with the smartly observed social satire at the core of the piece, and fails to make any meaningful connection with what we see of present-day Greece. Though it does give a pretext for the Bacchanalian party thrown by two loathsome and supercilious British expats, James (Tom Goodman-Hill) and Flick (Dolly Wells), which abruptly trips the story off into a different dimension entirely…
- Two Weeks in August continues on BBC One on Saturdays. All episodes available on BBC iPlayer
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