Wodehouse to the rescue

I knew this would happen: I’ve been watching season five of Mad Men on DVD and it’s spoiled me for normal telly. If you notice increased levels of toxicity — dissatisfaction and disgruntlement — in the following grumblings, then Mad Men is the reason.  Nothing pleases me so much, you see, and I am likely to remain crabby and sniffy until the effects of that 13-episode pleasure-binge wear off.

Where to go from Madison Avenue in 1966? Which to choose of these bracing alternatives: the cuckoo-land of Mr Selfridge (Sunday, ITV), the dismal wastes of Utopia (Wednesday, Channel 4) or the company of those dashing, anxious, well-dressed Spies of Warsaw (Wednesday, BBC4)?

I should have enjoyed Spies of Warsaw much more than I did: it had been adapted by Messrs Clement and La Frenais and it starred the sainted David Tennant. It looked gorgeous — sprinkled with the BBC’s best-quality fairy dust — but even though I attended faithfully to every minute of those three long hours I was not rewarded — it dawdled worse than a toddler on a Sunday walk.

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Since we knew how it would end (rumble of tanks), and what would have to happen before it did (kiss-and-make-up), none of the other business seemed to be critical. If I had loved the characters I might have worried more about them, but they were so well labelled — ‘drunk Russian writer’, ‘faithful retainer’, ‘doomed Bolshevik couple’, ‘disbelieving army superior’ — that character didn’t come into it. Our hero, Jean-François Mercier (Tennant), looked understandably gloomy, but rather confusingly bored. Was that supposed to be ennui? Heartbreak? The pessimism of the well-informed? I didn’t believe that this sorrowful, faun-like creature could manage a hard day in the office, let alone the spying, fighting, dancing and kissing that he took on after hours: his clothes all looked too big for him and when he picked up a rifle it almost toppled him over.