It’s fun in the north with this fun,if foolish, tale of first-generation Ann Summers party hosts. While Brian Cox’s Forces of Nature is a tour, or if not a tour de force“I can’t even touch the stuff,never mind sell it!” So says Stephanie, the beleaguered hero of new ITV drama series Brief Encounters. It is the story of the first generation of Ann Summers party hosts, or a pioneering set of dildo-wielding women out to empower themselves and enrich Jacqueline Gold via the medium of split-crotch panties and other gentle and mildly thrush-inducing perversions. Stephanie (Sophie Rundle) tells her mother she has a job “in sales”. “You need something approximately you to do that,” sniffs her mother. Did I mention we were up north? We are.We’re also in 1982, although until someone shouted “This is 1982 and we are women in the throes of a sexual awakening!” I wasn’t certain. Apart from Nita (Angela Griffin) being permanently clad in a snow-wash denim jacket, and there wasnt much in the way of period detail. Which mattered,because without a firm setting in the pre-internet era, everyone’s conniptions at the understanding of selling a few vibrators looked simply demented instead of quaint (charmingly old fashioned), and left the viewer discombobulated,rather than nodding wryly and whispering “O tempora! O mores! O that looks painful!” at the screen.
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Source: theguardian.com