Dench and Blades are real-life best friends. As they take each other on a tour of their pasts, the warmth between them makes for absolutely magical television
I keep going outside big television studios and shouting into a megaphone; it’s a thing I do when I am not writing this column. The BBC really wants me to stop. ITV, frankly, quite likes the attention. But what I always say into my military-grade amplifier is this: there is no substitute for chemistry.
I’ve made this my hobby because, wow, the television I have had to endure over the past few years where guests can barely open their eyes in front of presenters, or actors can barely bring themselves to pretend to like each other, or basically every Richard Ayoade episode of Travel Man. If the people on screen don’t have any chemistry with each other then you are wasting an hour of my life. If I want to watch small talk fail on the vine, I can go to a party and do it myself!
Apparently, whoever is on reception at Channel 4 has been passing my scrawled letters upstairs, though, because this week they are giving us the delightfully charming one-off gift of Dame Judi and Jay: The Odd Couple (18 August, 9pm, Channel 4), an hour of television that will go down as one of the year’s weirdest crossover events but also one of its most soul-enriching.
