The Unsurpassable Mr Barratt...

Starting as a series of short monologues of only eight minutes long first shown on BBC2 in 2000, ‘Marion And Geoff,‘ was a show, through no fault of it’s own, which became mild cult viewing. Hushed and unadvertised, the series was meant to be a time filler in the avant-garde BBC2 evening schedule. Eleven of these short scripted pieces were produced giving us a personal, but brief insight into the life of the unknown cabbie, Keith Barratt.

He first comes to our screens in the throws of a divorce and it is in this, that he represents a state of mind that just simply isn’t normal. What he is actually experiencing is what many of us would give up breathing over - a messy divorce with a wife who mentally abuses him along with her new lover who is possibly the father of one of Barratt’s two children. Sons he adores, yet he is not allowed to visit. Just some of these aspects would have the rest of us seething, bitter and at least, mildly aggressive yet, Barratt is calm, uplifted, optimistic and full of understanding. All attributes, we couldn’t possibly be in this sort of circumstance - this is the key of this torturous comedy. He fills our despair for him with lines such as ‘…if it wasn’t for Marion, I wouldn’t have met Geoff,’ whom he sees as a ‘smashing guy.’ (I hear your screams!) There was something critically exceptional about a certain type of person who can, in an extraordinary way, be contented, unnaturally like the captain of a sinking ship, as it slips into the deathly, icy waters. Undoubtedly, the word, ‘Fine’ has got to be the most misused word in our language. Add another two ‘fine’s’ on top of it and you have the makings of a person contemplating suicide, murder or both. Yet Barratt takes this flippant word and decorates it with flowers and a red carpet leading up to it and even worse - means it.

The camera sits in the same position, (on the dashboard on the passenger side,) and he talks freely at most, yet what holds our gaze is the flickers of realism that sometimes appear in his expressions. Deep inside, he is crying out from behind his iron exterior and throughout his journey of acceptance and understanding, we can see him come across failed attempt after another to see his children. His wife, would, quite frankly have him disappear for ever since successfully turning his children against him. Unknown to Keith, they don’t really want to see him anyway.

So if it isn’t enough that the programme is named after his estranged wife and her boyfriend, our key character bases his entire existence around the two people who have systematically destroyed his life, yet he praises them. We wonder if it was this peculiar, unnatural outlook on the world and it’s failings that lead to the infidelity of his wife in the first place. Not unlike the extreme’s in which Gordon’s Brittas’s wife is driven to by her irritating husband in the BBC’s ‘The Brittas Empire,’ another situation comedy of the early Nineties which featured around the same annoyingly bright character.

Rob Rydon and co writer Hugo Blick gave us perfectly timed pieces that quickly became addictive for the viewer. We found ourselves tuning in every Tuesday night at ten to ten to find out how Keith was, along the bittersweet path to seeing his ‘little smashers.’ (The affectionate and misconstrued term he used to describe his children.) Each time we visited him, like invited, amateur psychiatrists, Keith was sitting behind the wheel of his trusty cab, waiting for his customer of that day. He talked as one would to a friend - a friend who knows the people he is talking about. We quickly drew up visual conclusions as to what these awful people were like. (The other of the show’s producers, the diverse, Steve Coogan appeared briefly in one episode in the second series as Geoff.) We, the cringing viewers, found we wanted to throttle Marion and her bit on the side, but all Keith wanted to do, is embrace them.

The second series saw Barratt in a higher position. Swapping his cabbie licence for a cap and suit, he began working for a wealthy American family and their brattish kid who finds joy in putting down at any given moment, this tormented driver. This time, the show gave us 20 minutes more per episode of excruciating viewing two years after the first pain ridden series in 2003. Before this second shot at the soul took to our telly’s, Rydon reverted to the West End stage to torture the world in 2002 for s short run of monologues. (the second most watched show through the hands of an audience since Derren Brown’s 2006 tour.)

Eventually, the BBC decided that enough was enough, and since Rydon had wanted to close the story before it got too suicidal, the hapless character was given a spoof chat show in 2004. Despite the old cliché of most loved fictional character taken to greater strangulated heights of the showbiz emporium, it actually worked. Only because it wasn’t allowed to run too long. Barratt, the chat show host got to ask minor celebrity couples about marriage, relationships and sex. Only aired in that one year, it ran long enough not for the genuine novelty of the character to wear off into ghastly cheese ridden commercialism.



In Conclusion…

We have never experienced such tortures in a comedy situation before as we do in ‘Marion And Geoff.’ We witness his personal thoughts, his fears, (very few) his feelings for a better future where they can all be happy together (yes, all of them,) but we know this will never be. It is, about as black as comedy gets. We applaud him for his courage against a world that the rest of us would emigrate from, and the
struggle we have with this extraordinary concept of this unique character is the unquestionable force of which we are drawn in by. We are friends with Keith. We know him and agree with him (and hate ourselves in the morning.) We admire his emotionless views and cry out when his situation is laid bare in all it’s unfulfilled despair. He is harmless and it is this, if anything, that we warm to.



Much is still to be learnt from Keith Barratt - as unbelievable as it may seem.







Keith Barratt - Rob Rydon

Written by Rydon and Hugo Blick
Direction - Blick/Steve Coogan/Henry Normal.

Series one - September to November 2000 BBC2 DVD £13.97 on Amazon.com and £15 from the BBC shop.
Series two - January to March 2000 BBC2. £19. BBC Shop.

By the compilation of I and II on DVD from the BBC shop for £26.99.




©m.duffy 2007
Ciao and dooyoo
2007