Six hundred and thirty years ago, Chaucer revealed in ‘The Wife of Bath’s Tale’ that what women really want is to be totally in charge of everything. With Girl now back home permanently having done her A levels, I can confirm that this is true: no longer am I in control of what we watch on TV, not even when I plead that it’s my job and how else am I going to be able to afford the extensive tour of Magaluf and Bali etc. that she’s got planned this summer?
But I don’t mind really because it means I’m forced to watch stuff there’s no way I would have seen otherwise. And in doing so I become a better and wiser person because of all the fascinating things it teaches me about the female psychopathology.
Big Little Lies (Sky Atlantic), for example. This is the latest project of David E. Kelley, the prolific and hugely successful screenwriter with a rare knack for getting inside women’s heads, as he demonstrated with Ally McBeal. Feminists hated Ally McBeal because of its outrageous suggestion that given half the chance women don’t want to be hard-nosed bitches competing violently with men in the workplace, but are naturally just kooky fantasists who dream about finding Mister Right and then having lovely cute dancing babies. Normal women loved it.
I would have expected similar criticisms to have been made of Big Little Lies, which is patently a massive exercise in very cynically targeted girl pornography. Hunky blokes with ripped torsos and loads of money; mega-expensive modern houses with stripped hardwood floors, picture windows and views over Monterey Bay; tension and one-upmanship on the school run; haircuts; yoga; accessories; fancy kitchens; infidelity — all spiced with lashings of parental guilt, rape menace, suspicion, intrigue and murder.
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