Why foreign-language series will always have the edge over American ones

An office worker stands on the ledge of an open window about to leap. Two colleagues enter, ignoring him completely. They sit at symmetrical desks and read reports about the man’s background while he clings to the window frame, poised between life and death. This is the opening of Samuel Beckett’s Rough for Theatre II, starring Daniel Radcliffe and Alan Cumming. Stewart Laing’s beautiful design places the window centre-stage with the man standing in isolation between his two colleagues, like Christ and the thieves at Calvary. Beckett would have approved.

For the first ten minutes of this bizarre play, the Old Vic audience sat in polite silence tittering only at expletives like ‘cunt’, ‘bugger’ and ‘dogshit’. Then the action got started. Cumming rose and crossed the stage to swap desks, and his camp swagger won a big laugh. Then the Anglepoise lamps started to snap on and off with maddening unpredictability.