dinner is a British sitcom created, written and produced jointly by Victoria Wood. The two series were broadcast on BBC One from 1998 to 2000, for a total of 16 episodes. The program was repeated on Gold, and the full series was released on DVD in November 2004.
Video Dinnerladies (TV series)
Sinopsis
The series is set completely in the canteen HWD Components, a fictional factory in Manchester, featuring catering and regular customers as the main characters. It describes the life and social and romantic interactions of the staff, and is centered around the main character Brenda Furlong (Wood).
Maps Dinnerladies (TV series)
Awards
The first series won the 1999 Rose d'Or Press Award and "Best New TV Comedy" at the 1999 British Comedy Awards, and the second won "Best TV Comedy" in 2000. The show has also been nominated for the British Academy Television Award for "Best Comedy (Program or Series) "and" Situation of Comedy Awards "in 1998 and 1999 respectively. It came 28th in the British Sitcom polls poll in 2004.
Plot summary
At the start of the first series, we were introduced to the main character, a group of female and middle-aged cafeteria workers in Northern England: the main character is Brenda 'Bren' Furlong who is good and reliable (played by Victoria Wood), whose relationship with the canteen's manager is sarcastic and tired Tony Martin (Andrew Dunn), developed through the show.
The primitive Dolly Bellfield (Thelma Barlow) and her Jean-faced friend (Anne Reid) are also featured, as well as the younger couple of the slick Twinkle (Maxine Peake), who are always late, and ditzy but light-hearted Anita (Shobna Gulati).
Stan Meadowcroft (Duncan Preston) is a well-preserved and easily provoked (but well-meaning) man who is responsible for cleaning factory and repairing equipment. A cheerful but disorganized HR manager, Philippa Moorcroft (Celia Imrie) is from the South and is incompatible with other staff; he moved to Manchester because of his relationship with senior staff member Mr. Michael (Christopher Greet).
Julie Walters also appeared in nine episodes as the disadvantaged, imaginary and manipulant Bren's mother living in a caravan behind the gas station. He left Bren in an orphanage, and often appeared to ask for help.
In the first series, the relationship between Bren and Tony began to develop, and he supported it when he underwent chemotherapy. Philippa tries to organize team building activities, factory receives royal visit, Bren's mother causes scandal at factory, team takes their mother to work, HWD component joins Japanese company and Tony temporarily replaced due to his treatment.
Throughout the second series, Bren and Tony's relationship grew; the canteen takes on a working experience girl named Sigourney (Joanne Froggatt), Jean goes to live with his sister after she is put into an unpleasant atmosphere by her unfaithful husband, a murderer escaping from a local prison and Bren's fear of a wrong needle for pregnancy Jane (Sue Devaney) organizes a vacation to Marbella, where Bren and Tony want to go together. After the mix, Bren manages to get the place, but he finally gives the money to his mother. Their colleagues were betting when Bren and Tony would "start", and they finally got together after Tony had a surprise birthday party for Bren, who was born on Christmas Eve.
Later in the series, Philippa was unable to attend her Millennium Eating, and Anita had an infant; after leaving her anonymously for Bren to be treated, she takes it back and goes on maternity leave; he was temporarily replaced by Christine (Kay Adshead), who was disliked by the rest of the dinner.
Single or character episodes are occasionally played by guest actors, including Tina Malone, Eric Sykes, Dame Thora Hird, Dora Bryan, Lynda Baron, Elspet Gray, Janette Tough (from The Krankies) and Kenny Doughty.
Themes
Humor mostly comes from conversations and banter between characters, about their lives and popular culture, most often movies and television: dialogue often displays funny misunderstandings, malapropism and sexual innuendo. The series also features real situations, often involving Bren's mother.
There are also counter-themes of sadness, including the deaths in the family of two main characters, a painful divorce, one character who lives with cancer, one character becomes a single parent, and heartache in the relationship of Bren and Tony.
Production
Write
This series is entirely written by Victoria Wood, without additional contributors or script editors. Wood approaches writing by enabling the plot to develop from the interaction between characters, rather than the pass character into the predefined storyline.
He wrote the first six episodes in a month; However, he found the second series much harder to write, and despite only having four more episodes, it took six months. Wood attributes it to the pressure of doing it all alone and lonely, and says that he's even considering giving up because he thinks the script is of poor quality.
Wood deliberately ends the program after two series, and the last episode of the second is designed to conclude it. He says that he "does not usually do anything twice", but feels that the second series is needed to do the show justice, and that he knows where to take the show after seeing the air and understand "what people [have ] taken from him ". He mentions short-term Fawlty Towers when explaining why he plans not to continue the series further. However, in a BBC television documentary about the company's sitcom history, Wood complains that the series has been sacked by the BBC, though that is what he describes as "a show they can not kill".
Filming
Taking only one set across the way (with the exception of quiz shows and hospital sets both seen on television screens in the last two episodes), the dinner was fully filmed at BBC Television Center in front of live studio viewers, using multi-camera settings. Other locations such as character homes and other parts of the factory are only mentioned in the conversation.
The set was meant to be as realistic as possible, and even featured a functioning catering toaster from which studio viewers served toast during filming.
Jokes are generally delivered quickly with dialog usually just stopping to allow laughter of the audience to settle. Each episode was filmed twice in front of two separate viewers, one on Friday and again on Saturday. This gives the cast members two attempts to perfect the scene and, if necessary, an opportunity to correct the error without having to repeat the joke to the same audience. It also gives Wood a chance to make script changes that he thinks can improve every episode.
The director and producer of the series is Geoff Posner, and his executive producers are Philip McIntyre and David Tyler; the program is produced jointly by production companies Victoria Wood, Good News and Posner's Pozzitive Television.
Music
The theme music of the event was composed by Victoria Wood. It is usually played without lyrics, but at the end of the episode "Minnellium" and "Toast", vocals also written and done by Wood are included.
When Victoria Wood was a guest at Parkinsons, she performed the program's theme song with a grand piano.
Reception
Dinnerladies are generally well received, and praised by critic Tom Paulin. The watch numbers for series 1 peaked with the premiere at 12.24 million viewers, and the 2nd series peaked with "Minnellium", which aired on December 31, 1999 and reached 15.330 million viewers.
Theater
A drama based on the premiere series in London in April 2009. The drama is based on three episodes of the second series of TV shows, and is concentrated on the romance between Bren and Tony. The film is directed by David Graham, who also adapted the original Victoria Wood TV script for the stage. Gulati and Dunn took their original role from the TV series. The show traveled around the UK during 2009.
The second show called Dinnerladies: Second Helpings toured in 2011 with a new script, once again featuring Dunn, joining original cast member Sue Devaney. Shobna Gulati goes to return to the soap opera Coronation Street.
Home media
All series of dinnerladies on VHS and DVD through BBC Worldwide and Universal Playback distribution.
Note
References
External links
- Dinner at on BBC Online
- dinner in Comedy TV Comedy
- dinner on IMDb
- dinner at the British Comedy Guide
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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