I haven’t used this pun yet this year and even though it’s taken me right up to the last few minutes of possible deployment, I am glad I kept my powder dry – because Men Up is definitely this year’s Christmas cracker. The 90-minute tale of the first trial (in Morriston Hospital, Swansea, in 1994) of the drug that would become Viagra, is short, sweet and altogether lovely. Though it never loses its twinkle, it plays the matter straight and – while the characters may joke about their situations – never for laughs. Tonally, it’s a masterpiece by writer Matthew Barry and director Ashley Way that never undercuts or overeggs a moment.
The story coheres round a handful of men who, after trying the various treatments on offer in the early 90s for their erectile dysfunction (penis injections, inflatable rods, a literal pump in the scrotum, pellets up the urethra), leap at the chance to try a potential cure in pill form. Soon Meurig (Iwan Rheon), whose failure to thrive is a consequence of his diabetes, though his wife (Alexandra Roach) fears it is a reaction to her double mastectomy after breast cancer, and his fellow sufferers find themselves hooked up to “strain gauges”, popping pills, watching porn and waiting for magic to happen. For most, eventually, it does. For others, the disappointment threatens to overwhelm everything.
What unfolds is a gentle, compassionate but witty examination of the importance placed – by men, by society, by women (though I’d like to talk further about that one) – on the presence or absence of erections and the capacity or incapacity for penetrative sex. And from there, an equally kindly but acute interrogation of the narrow definitions of masculinity we work within, the inflexibility and absurdity of them, the needless misery caused by falling outside the lines.
More impressively still, Barry’s script makes poignantly clear the difference between sex and intimacy. The restoration of boners solves only one problem and often, it turns out, not the true one. Widowed Colin’s (Steffan Rhodri) pills allow him to move beyond phone sex with his new lady friend, but it is the love he and his late wife shared, despite years without him being able to “perform” (as if men were actors – or seals), that carries him through. And it is what allows him to help a despairing man for whom the new drug does not work. The rarely depicted intimacy of unembarrassed male friendship is almost the most moving element of Men Up.
But there is also the rare sight of marriages in difficulties but set fair to overcome them. And of ordinary men wrestling with problems without turning to drink, or violence, or into monsters. And of the deep wounds unthinking cruelties can inflict – for example when Tommy (Paul Rhys), whose long-term partner is a man, must lie to get on the trial because the protocol dictates that only heterosexuals qualify. Not only are those tramlines narrow, but they must also lead only to vaginas. What a world.
All this and a great opening turn by Katy Wix as Meurig’s obtuse therapist. Men Up is a lovingly made thing, full of delicately poised performances that allow the whole to pivot from funny to sad and back again without the smallest wobble. What a lovely way to end the year.
• Men Up is on BBC One and iPlayer
