Could BBC One’s Rain Dogs be the first time a fairly explicit “glory hole” scene, complete with slurpy sound effects, has been transmitted on British television? The nearest precedent I can think of was a transmission of the biopic of the outrageous Sixties playwright Joe Orton, Prick Up Your Ears, but, from memory, there was no full-on fellatio in the bogs depicted. So Rain Dogs has at least made its mark for that.
That sounds a bit dismissive, but it’s the reverse. Sleaze – proper, depressing, tawdry sleaze; sleaze infused with danger and drink – is rarely portrayed with much conviction on the telly, but this eight-part darker-than-dark sort-of-comedy makes you just as uneasy as our hero of the underworld, peep show performer Costello. The not-so-good-time girl is played with the usual brilliance by Daisy May Cooper. After Cooper’s delusional, unloved, Kerry in This Country through the gaslit Nic in Am I Being Unreasonable? to this latest trial by humiliation, I sometimes wonder what compels the actor to play such battered characters. Anyway, she’s hit rock bottom, if you’ll excuse the expression, here.
