Friends and Crocodiles

I just ordered this on DVD from Amazon. "By Stephen Poliakoff".
I watched it last night, BBC1-it was fantastic. It's about this guy Paul Reynolds in 1981 who is ridiculously rich and this uptight woman Lizzie Thomas who starts work as his secretary. He is pissing around the whole time, having parties, and driving a red bus around his grounds, although he has a study full of designs for wind turbines and airships, which makes her fascinated by him. He has a crowd of poets and "artists" and stuff who he lets hang around and gives enormous banquets for ("just a small picnic, nothing special I promise") About a year later she organises this amazing, posh party for him and after a while he invites some hooligans in ("my parties always need an element of suprise") and they fuck it up. She leaves, and doesn't speak to him for like 5 years...

5 years later she's working in this stupid "future-prediction" type company, and he's invested badly and has lost a large part of his money. They meet by chance, and after a while she gets him to come and work at the company. Everyone else in the company is obsessed with stupid 80's "future" shit. So he spends five months in his office coming up with... bookshops. Just simple bookshops that sell quality books, no extra shit (Waterstones, anybody?) They of course think he's crazy and fire him, and she freaks out at him.

Another long period of time passes. He's now lost pretty much all his money, and is long-haired and unkempt; but still very smooth and suave. He hangs around in an old 24hr cafe, where a mentally handicapped guy also does (he was round the mansion as a kid). She's getting married to a guy whose dad owns an enormous pan-european manufacturing empire, and is going to work for them. Paul crashes the wedding, and a lot of the people from before are there who look at him in disgust. He has a bit of a scene with Liz; him saying that the company is "like a giant hippo, slow moving but very hard to destroy" but he goes when Liz agrees to call him after her honeymoon. She doesn't.

Another few years pass. It's the late 90's. (Guess what happens) The company is selling off all it's factories, laying off 20,000 workers; to invest hugely in internet and telecoms companies. Liz has misgivings about this, and finds Paul, who is now living on a farm with two wives (they were in his "artist" bunch) and about 5 kids all running round. He obviously talks sense to her, and she agrees, but can't seem to do anything about it.

After a bit, the dotcom bubble bursts and the share prices bottom out at like nothing pence from £20 each. She and the executives get lynched by the press at the shareholders' meeting, and she breaks down. She phones him, and he's like "yeah, I heard, so what? Come to my party."

Liz goes, and it's a big bonfire, everyone from the old days who rejected him is there. (Paul's bookshop idea paid off and he bought an old school, randomly.) He takes her aside and says that they should work together, that you need people that challenge you at work, and that they don't even need to see each other, with email and all. That they would be unstoppable together! She groans/smiles and it pans out with everyone dancing around the bonfire.

Friends and Crocodiles is a fabulously complex and indulgent tale, telling the story of Paul and Liz and their complete incompatibility, but dread fascination with each other. The way the characters are weaved in and out of each other's lives throughout 20 years is brilliantly executed. The characters themselves are also great. Paul is a masterclass in unflappability, cool and collected and sharp even when he's lost all status. People are clearly intimidated by this ability, none more so than Liz who is completely scared of what he'll do when he shows up at the wedding. It takes a long time for her to realise that what looks like his uncaring, surface-deep view and presentation of himself to the world is actually a far more mature and reasonable approach than her obsession with 'bettering herself', and in the end when it all falls apart, he is there to catch her. Liz is not so interesting, as a slightly uptight and prim character, but obviously plays a necessary foil to Paul.

The best character drama I have seen since I can remember.

9/10 for me.