I wonder if Ricky Gervais saw Marvellous (BBC2). The creator of Derek might have learned something from Toby Jones. You don’t need to ham it up, dart your eyes all over the place, hang your head to one side and your mouth open. Sometimes less is more.
I suppose it helps Jones that the person he is playing - Neil Baldwin - is a real one, and around, and he has a life model to work with. He’s not just around, but sometimes he is on screen with him, too. Yes, the real Neil Baldwin joins the pretend Neil Baldwin in his own story – like here, sitting together on a bench outside the student union at Keele University. “When you first came to Keele, were you nervous?” asks pretend Neil Baldwin. “I’m never nervous,” replies real Neil.
It’s reassuring for the viewer, to see Jones checking things with the man he’s playing, and to see that he has not just Baldwin’s blessing but also his affection, too. They look like they get along fine.
Inspired by an article in the Guardian, Peter Bowker’s film is Neil Baldwin’s life story, a story that somehow manages to be both ordinary and extraordinary. Baldwin - whose difficulties are perceived by others, not by him - loses his job as a clown, but gets a new one, working for Stoke City manager Lou Macari, as kit man/sort of mascot. And he gets another (unofficial) job, as a sort of student liaison officer at Keele Uni. Well, he’s more like just a friend of the students, really. Neil (or Nello, when he’s being a clown) has a lot of friends - students, football managers, players, referees, fans, vicars, bishops, archbishops, celebrities, politicians, chaffinches. He gets through life by asking for things, and because people like Neil.
Sound sentimental? Well, it is. The only prejudice Neil faces in the film are from one nasty ringmaster, and there’s a solitary “mong” from an unreconstructed footballer (didn’t know you played for Stoke pre-The Office, Ricky). The only other downer is the death of Neil’s mum. Otherwise, Marvellous is what its subject would probably describe as “a very nice film”. If it were a body part, it would be a heart, and a big one. Drink? Mug of tea, milk two sugars, saccharin even. Ooh, and that church choir, with all the ukuleles, strumming away at their heartstrings, acting like a kind of chorus? It got a bit much for me.
But Marvellous gets away with its sentimentality, because of the interesting way it’s put together, like a scrapbook of his life, and with real characters dropping in from time to time, not just real Neil but real Lou Macari and real Gary Lineker. I asked @GaryLineker if that scene (helping to recruit for the Neil Baldwin Football Team) actually happened but he never replied. It doesn’t really matter if it happened or not, that the line between reality and fiction in some of the detail is a blurred one. But still, rude man.
Marvellous also works because it’s funny (love all the dressing up, and the thousands of Potters fans on the terraces singing – to the tune of You’re Not Singing Any More (or Rhondda Valley, if you prefer) – What The Fucking Hell Is That, when Neil makes his debut on the touchline. And it’s moving, when Neil’s mum dies. Not at the home, when he’s told about it, and seems not to properly take it in, but later alone (very alone), sitting in his room, when the reality sinks in, his bottom lip quivers, and he sobs, almost silently.
That’s the final reason why Marvellous works: Toby Jones’s portrayal. Can this really be the same man who was, so convincingly, Truman Capote? It’s a lovely, very human, performance. And the Potters fans may have to add a new song to their repertoire (to the tune of There’s Only One Neil Baldwin): “There’s Only Two Neil Baldwins, Two Neil Baaaaaldwins, There’s Only Two Neil Baldwins…”
How does Your Home in their Hands (BBC1) work then? Two unimaginative couples, who can’t decide how to do up their homes, foolishly hand over the keys. Then they bring in amateur interior designers – clearly chosen for the utter wrongness of their ideas and their potential for the most amount damage (physical, emotional) to their victims. Oh, and they put two designers, with very different styles, into each house, so there’s conflict within the process as well as at the end. By which time everyone is in tears. I see. Quite interesting then, I think.
