Monday saw the return of possibly the weirdest TV series in living memory. Imagine a parallel universe in which Are You Being Served? had starred Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud and Janet Suzman, and you might get some idea of what ITV’s Vicious is like. Alternatively, I suppose, you could just watch the thing and realise that no, you’re not drunk — you really are seeing Derek Jacobi, Ian McKellen and Frances de la Tour acting their socks off in a sitcom that would have been considered rather creaky in 1975.
Jacobi and McKellen play Stuart and Freddie: a pair of gay actors who’ve been living together for decades despite the fact that their main mode of communication is to trade personal insults while the studio audience laughs dutifully. De la Tour is their friend Vi, a sex-starved older woman of the kind not often seen since Mrs Slocombe and Dick Emery were in their pomp.
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