“When I came to Greece, I knew it was going to be spiritual,” says comedian Ninia Benjamin. “I did not expect to be shaking my vagina.” But shake it for Our Shirley Valentine Summer (ITV), she does, along with seven other celebrity women who are single and ready to give their lives a sun-and-sea overhaul. ITV has carved out a kind of niche recently in sticking vintage celebrities into unusual situations and hoping for fireworks. They got Pat Butcher high on Gone to Pot, stripped Ainsley Harriot naked for The Real Full Monty, and sent Su Pollard to Sin City for Last Laugh in Vegas. It’s a Partridge-esque approach to commissioning, but the results have been oddly compelling, not least for offering viewers the unforgettable sight of a meal made with edible pot all getting a bit much for Christopher Biggins.
It has been a while since I have seen Shirley Valentine, the film, but I am fairly certain that it isn’t quite the romcom that it is remembered to be when people talk about “doing a Shirley Valentine”. Helpfully, there are three disclaimers at the start of the show, stating clearly that it is only “inspired by” the story, that any similarities to the play or film are coincidental, and that it has not actually been licensed as an official Shirley Valentine product, if there could be such a thing. I think even Willy Russell might struggle to conjure dramatic intrigue out of Siân Lloyd admitting that she quite fancies her hill-walking instructor, or Melinda Messenger deciding that she is going to spend the month looking after chickens, so the group can have their own eggs.
Still, that hasn’t prevented the makers from framing this as a kind of Love Island with compulsory sarongs. The eight participants are single, the voiceover reminds us every few minutes, and are spending a month on the Greek island of Naxos in the hope of finding love. Most have been married and are now divorced. Whether it is admitting that not having children has been hard, or discussing the effects of an extra-marital affair, they all seem a little bruised by life. This is their chance to experience something that could dig them out of the rut they say they have found themselves in (specifically, for Annabel Giles, it is “a box set rut”). With the exception of Lizzie Cundy’s unquenchable thirst for “bad boys”, including a language teacher who looks as if he took a wrong turn at the Love Island auditions, it is all very nice and wholesome, for the most part. It is also a little genteel, a bit too pleasant to really rollick along. Perhaps it is time to send in the edibles.
There is a big however, though, in the shape of Nancy Dell’Olio. For everyone else’s tentative niceness, Dell’Olio gives a strong impression that she does not need to be anywhere near Naxos, that it is simply an amusing diversion from her main occupation of being fabulous. She bats away the suggestion that wearing tottering heels on a hillside track is difficult, insisting instead that it is good exercise. When the others tell the story of their 50th birthdays, she confides that she took her friends to Puglia. “Closest friends?” “400 people,” she replies, coolly. She has a cocktail in the morning because she feels like it. Her ineffable confidence seems far more useful to the others than the slightly uncomfortable matchmaking setups, and particularly for Benjamin, who could do with a self-esteem boost. “You can’t stop a free spirit,” shrugs Dell’Olio, the fairy godmother of not-giving-a-hoot. Sadly, the trailer for the next episode teases that she might bring some friction to the house, which is a shame. I would much prefer her to glide through the month doling out drinks and real talk than becoming the villain of the piece. Surely there is enough poolside bickering over on ITV2.
The vagina-shaking, by the way, is part of a spiritual class, in which some of the women spend their time sitting with a softly spoken, guru-ish woman who promises to help them “rediscover their sexuality” by imagining a snake roaming around their nether regions. It is worth seeing Our Shirley Valentine Summer for that, obviously, and for Dell’Olio, but the rest of it leaves the viewer with the feeling you get when you have agreed to look at somebody else’s holiday photos, only to find that there are 300 of them to get through.