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Right. So those of you who’ve read this blog before know that I have a (ahem) ‘charming’ habit of stopping one series in the middle and starting another. #sorrynotsorry. This is not that post. But it is a short interruption to write about something else which struck me this morning as I was making my porridge. We will get back to Yosemite tomorrow, I promise (after all, I’m at present squatting in the Canadian wilderness with my pants round my ankles having a pee and worrying about BEARS). But I wanted to write about this first. Bite me. (Unless you’re a BEAR, in which case, please don’t.)

So, the Bechdel-Wallace test, about which I have written previously, in the context of TV series. Last night I watched the final episode of Series One of The Split. If you haven’t already seen this, I can’t recommend it too highly; it’s available on BBC iPlayer (free) and Google Play and YouTube (paid) and it’s absolutely fantastic.

It has stunning performances from all the leads, particularly Nicola Walker and Deborah Findlay. And what an absolute f*cking joy to see older women leading and carrying a series and, as characters, being allowed to be intelligent and ruthless and driven and complex and glamorous and sexual and successful. Oh, and not dying. Props, Abi Morgan!

It has loads and loads of other women too, including women of colour, in great big fat juicy roles. Huge shout-out to Meera Syal – my GOD, that woman is good in this! It has Stephen Mangan and Stephen Tompkinson being amazing. It has Barry Atsma for eye candy. It has a shout-out performance from Chukwudi Iwuji, a less successful actor in real terms and lower on the cast list in this show than the actors he’s required to play against as their boss (such are the injustices of discrimination) and he absolutely kills it in terms of playing high status when he’s actually lower status. You could show his performance as a masterclass. Please, somebody, give this man a show of his own! From start to finish, there isn’t a weak link in the acting. Anthony Head is probably the least convincing in his role, which gives you an idea of how high the bar is set.

And the writing! OMG!! Bloody superb. It’s a perfect example of how to write a perfect show. Abi Morgan ABSOLUTELY shows her screen-writing chops in this. She should have won a bloody BAFTA for it, no doubt. The direction, too, is faultless. London looks amazing throughout, and it’s surprisingly accurate in portraying more or less what Big Law is actually like (having worked on the fringes of it for most of my career, I have some knowledge of it). The houses too are perfect examples of the places that people live who earn in the high six figures and live in London. Which is not surprising, because they’re real houses, lived in by real people. I know this because I have a friend who rents her house out to the production company which makes Midsomer Murders in which it plays DCI John Barnaby’s house. For that is what production companies do – why build and dress a set when the real thing is readily available? My friend’s family moves out for a weekend every so often, staying in a five star hotel at the company’s expense and earning money on top for temporarily handing over their home, and the production company films in and around their house. The company mostly uses the real furniture and accessories, but replacing some such as the chrome kettle and toaster (ruins the illusion if you can see the reflection of the camera when John Barnaby is ostensibly on his own in his kitchen making breakfast). They move the furniture around; quite often they actually paint the rooms, returning them to their original colour afterwards. So, those lovely houses? The real deal. And the glitzy offices where the lead character works are the real offices of a real law firm really in central London, although they were empty at the time of filming, the firm in question having merged with another and therefore vacated its erstwhile home (something which, ironically, also happens in the series itself).

So it’s all stunning and convincing and accurate* and superbly enjoyable. And yet. This SUPERB series was nominated for, and got, as far as I can make out, no awards at all. Which seems ridiculous. To my mind, it’s as good in every way as Bodyguard and Killing Eve, both of which were garlanded with awards and positive reviews, and on the various review sites it gets, from reviewers, exactly the same scores, around 4.6 or 4.7 out of five. And yet, in terms of industry plaudits, not so much. Why? Am I incredibly cynical to think that it’s because it’s a series about women and relationships which contains no violence and has older women in lead roles, as opposed to Killing Eve which has women in it, sure, one of them less than glamorous, but also stars a young and incredibly glamorous female assassin who kills people in every episode in increasingly inventive ways. (I’m not taking away from Jodie Comer, btw, she was stunning in Killing Eve.) And maybe this means that in an industry which is still male dominated, a TV series which is about ‘female stuff’ such as relationships gets overlooked**. Maybe I’m wrong. But I don’t think I am. And I wish it wasn’t so.

Anyway, if you haven’t already seen The Split, watch it. It’s brilliant. Even if it is about ‘female stuff’.

*Except for the way they run around London at the drop of a hat. Why do TV series always do this? In one scene the character is in their family home in what looks like Balham, the next minute they’re striding across Waterloo Bridge. That’s 40 minutes and fifty quid in a taxi, or an hour on the tube! People don’t do that!! However, ’tis a minor gripe, and at least they don’t show them actually in the taxi going past Buckingham Palace (yes, fifties British movies, I am looking at you).

**Yes, I know Fleabag. Women as a gender are allowed to have more than one or two successes, you know. It’s not “Oh, we’ve got Fleabag and Killing Eve, we ticked the Diversity Box, back to the real TV”. Sheesh.