Julia

This retirement lark is quite exhausting! What I thought would be peacefully long days filled with book-reading and coffee breaks have somehow become jam packed with all sorts of events and outings. Not that I am complaining! It is good to have days filled with variety and, truthfully, it is exhilerating. When I used to hear newly retired people say they had never been so busy as when they stopped working I thought it was one of those conversational fillers but it turns out to be true after all!

As I learn how to be a pensionista I will hopefully manage my time more productively. When I started this blog I had hoped to write at least once a week and thought twice a week would be good. I haven’t achieved that level of productivity consistently but I will work on it! I seem to have plenty of ideas for writing but getting to my laptop to jot them down has been less easy. After years of never being far away from my laptop I seem to be having difficulty getting to it these days!

Anyway, I wanted to jot down a few musings about the new series, Julia, with Sarah Lancashire, David Hyde Pierce and Bebe Neuwirth. I know nothing about Julia Child other than Meryl Streep played her in the 2009 movie, Julie and Julia, and from watching that I gathered she was a chef who had a tv show in the US. What drew me to the new series wasn’t Julia or her story but the actress playing her, Sarah Lancashire, who is just so damn good in everything she does.

I have never been a Coronation Street fan but it is impossible to completely ignore what happens on the soaps. Some storylines prick the public imagination so much that, fan or no, the events become common talking points that are impossible to avoid completely. One such scene for me was where Sarah Lancashire’s Raquel gets Ken Barlow to teach her French. Ken begins by asking the young Raquel which French words or phrases she knows already to which she replies with some basics. Based on this information he then suggests she say ‘Hello Ken. My name is Raquel and it is a lovely day today.’ Happily she responds, ‘Bonjour Ken. Je m’appelle Raquel. Voulez vous couchez avec moi ce soir.’ She is delighted to have achieved this task while Ken is left dumbfounded and uncertain how to explain what she has really said! It is a favourite scene for fans and non-fans alike.

Sarah Lancashire was brilliant as Raquel and she has received great reviews for almost everything she has done. I loved her in Last Tango in Halifax and she has tackled comedy and drama equally well. I often think she is an underused actress even though she is constantly on television. Other actors, with less talant, have tried their luck on bigger stages and in Holywood but she seems to stick to the British tv and stage. This may be a personal choice but it is a loss to audiences, I feel.

I was therefore, so pleased to see her playing Julia Child in the new Sky Atlantic series with such greats as David Hyde Pierce (Niles Crane) and Bebe Neuwirth (Dr Lilith Sternin). I have no idea how accurate it is regarding the life of the chef but it is great entertainment and Sarah Lancashire brings the whole human range of emotions to the part. There is a scene in the first episode where her doctor tells her she is entering menopause. Julia’s brief look of realisation that she will always now be childless is heartbreaking. A tiny moment so beautifully created for the audience. In another scene a college friend is recalling an incident that had a huge impact on her life but Julia is bemused that it meant so much to her when she barely recalled it…or perhaps recalled it completely differently. Again, a brief look but it conveyed so much more.

Julia speaks perfect French and says at one point to her husband, ‘Vive la difference’. It brought me back to that scene in Coronation Street and I couldn’t help but laugh out loud. It is so good to see Sarah Lancashire in a part that will be seen by a wider audience and the support cast is outstanding too. I saw an interview with Bebe Neuwirth where she was asked about the American attachment to Julia Child. She responded that she was always only herself and never sought to be something she was not. We see her, protrayed so beautifully by Sarah Lancashire, as a funny, goofy, intelligent, fragile, loving, outgoing, anxious person. A complex emotional being who also, apparently, changed Americans’ relationship to food.