Pure poison: BBC1’s Talking Heads reviewed

The big mistake people make with Alan Bennett is to conflate him with his fellow Yorkshireman David Hockney. But whereas Hockney’s art is generous, warm, bright, life-affirming, Bennett’s is crabbed, catty, dingy, insinuating. The fact that the BBC-led establishment keeps telling us he’s a National Treasure tells us more about the BBC-led establishment than it does about Bennett. Bennett is typical of the English intelligentsia Orwell anatomised in his ‘The Lion and the Unicorn’ essay: ‘It is always felt that there is something slightly disgraceful in being an Englishman and that it is a duty to snigger at every English institution, from horse racing to suet puddings.’

I’d forgotten quite how much I disliked Bennett till I was reminded by the BBC’s revival, this week, of his universally acclaimed 1980s monologues Talking Heads. No Thora Hird this time, obviously. But lots of really top-notch thespian talent — Harriet Walter, Sarah Lancashire, Martin Freeman, etc — going through their paces, dusting down their special accents, meaningful expressions and pregnant pauses, paying homage to the master (now 86).