We must just bow our heads and accept it. Some commissions are unavoidable, and Dame Judi and Jay: The Odd Couple is one of them. Someone gets wind of the fact that nearly-nonagenarian national treasure and probably the greatest actor of her generation Judi Dench and 54-year-old furniture restorer Jay Blades, who grew up on an east London council estate and has dyslexia, have become firm friends since she appeared on his show The Repair Shop two years ago. Their names begin with the same letter. The summer schedules need filling with stuff that doesn’t matter in the slightest. And lo, a one-hour travelogue is born, as the pair take each other to visit places that have meant the most to them during their very different lives.
Blades takes “the Dame” as he generally calls her to the venerable Ridley Road market in Dalston, a hub for the local Black community in his childhood and where he went every weekend with his mother as she collected gossip and bargains in equal measure. “Oh, this is heaven!” says the Dame, clearly an inveterate shopper, as she picks up gewgaw after gewgaw despite Blades’ attempts to rein her in. Inevitably, the genuinely interesting material – simply watching the two of them chat, banter and laugh together, seeing the authenticity of their relationship and letting a little wonder at the miracle of human connection creep in – must be interrupted by stunts such as getting them to take over a market stall and sell plantain to (busy and unimpressed) customers. Later there is a pub quiz in the local boozer, where a young Dench and her new husband Michael Williams – “the love of my life” – spent much of their time when they lived in Stratford-upon-Avon, that serves much the same irritating purpose.
