It’s 1990, it’s Stockport and Martin Parker (Conleth Hill) is a fiftysomething self-made man running a chain of electrical stores that are starting to struggle. Recession, “them s***houses from Rumbelows”, the banks and a couple of loan sharks are making business difficult for him. This is all despite his cheesy local TV ads, which give the BBC One show its name – “Cheapest prices this side of the Pennines; that’s the power of Parker.”
Martin is under pressure. He’s got a nice house, a couple of upmarket motors (Saab saloon, Mercedes sports car), kids at private school, and a put-upon but loyal and supportive wife, Diane (Rosie Cavaliero, who fills the role with such a surfeit of combustible nervous frustration she seems ready to implode). But Martin’s world is about to fall apart, because he also has a mistress, called Kath. Played with usual aplomb by Sian Gibson, Kath, roughly Martin’s age, isn’t doing as well for herself as the provincial electrical tycoon. She’s a mobile hairdresser with a clientele drawn mainly from residential care homes. They’ve been in this relationship for 25 years, but, with characteristic insensitivity, Martin chooses to end things on their “anniversary”, even as she’s dressed, randomly and comically, and just for him, as a Bavarian dairy maid, all ready for their carnal afternoon delight. We see Martin unusually tense, torn between lust and solvency because he can no longer afford the rent on her flat/love-nest above a butcher’s shop. “It’s over,” he tells her. “I can’t be responsible for you any more.” This merely adds to his problems.
Enraged, Kath later resolves to go round to his house to spill the beans to Diane about how long her husband has been unfaithful, just as Diane is hosting a welcome party for a group of French exchange students. Martin manages to keep Kath out of the way, but on her way off the premises she uses her hairdressing scissors to scratch some choice swearing onto the side of the Merc. Shocking as all that is, we learn in a final dramatic twist at the end of episode one that Kath is… Diane’s sister (!). Diane doesn’t know. Yet. Will she? We want to be there when she surely does.
Both Martin’s love life and this new sitcom are a bit of a strange affair (pun intended). Written by Gibson and Paul Coleman, who also collaborated on Peter Kay’s Car Share, it seems to have been inspired by bits of the work of Kay himself (Brian Potter and Phoenix Nights), Steve Coogan (Alan Partridge), Ricky Gervais (David Brent), Peter Serafinowicz (Brian Butterfield), and Victoria Wood (assorted funny Northerners), but laced with some very dark vibes about women betrayed: a bit like Dinner Ladies crossed with The Life and Loves of a She-Devil, perhaps. It’s quite a successful formula, as it happens, and it especially suits Gibson’s unsurpassed ability to extract comedic bathos from the most unlikely of scenarios. She’s certainly got a flair for Victoria Wood-style one-liners, rejecting an offer of drugs with: “All I need to unwind is an Archers and lemonade and a good bop.” I half expected Kath to smack Martin on the bottom with a Woman’s Weekly, as the ultimate Woods tribute.
Keeping things on just the right side of tragedy, Gibson and Coleman are also careful not to make Martin into what he himself denies being, that is to say “a complete bastard”, leaving us to conclude that he’s just idiotic, sex-mad and vain, rather than outright evil: the sort of man who would indeed tell his worried accountant that he’s not going to sell the car because “it’s all about image in my game. Martin Parker can’t be seen driving round town in a Fiat Panda. It’s a hairdresser’s car.” Quite Partridge-esque, that.
The Power of Parker has some pleasingly sharp dialogue and the odd well-executed sight gag, but it’s more of a simmering sort of suspenseful drama than a comedy boiling over with laughs, and all the better for it – an engaging sort of romp (double entendre intended). It carries us along because the situation is intriguing and sufficiently tense for an audience to actually care about what will befall this weird middle-aged love triangle. It’s also replete with some warmly redolent period touches – this is a world of Breville sandwich toasters, cheese and pineapple snack “hedgehogs”, casual sexism, pink bathroom suites and smoking at your desk. And the choice of incidental music is impeccable – Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Human League, Bananarama, Soft Cell and, an especially nice surprise, Toyah Wilcox. I’m very much looking forward to Kath breaking the power of loverboy Parker.
