(courtesy IMDb)
Growing up is a challenge at the best of times.
But it’s made infinitely more complicated when you don’t exactly fit the very narrow mold of acceptability that society has laid down and you discover in the midst of all the chaos of getting older, that you’re not exactly one of the crowd.
It happened to this queer reviewer when he realised, at the age of 12 or so as the son of a Baptist minister, that he was gay in a world where that was not exactly embrace (okay not embraced at all) and it’s happening in “real time” to a young Alan Carr, well-known British comedian and talk show host) in Changing Ends, a beautifully realised sitcom set in the UK’s East Midlands during the 1980s.
The son of a a former professional footballer who manages Northhampton Town F.C. in the mid-eighties, Alan is surrounded by hyper masculinity from his dad (well, sort of), his childhood best friend and neighbour, Alfie (Jack Medlin)and the bullies at school, all of whom are living the masculine ethos of the day without much thought.
Alan however is not; he is best friends with the sassy grandmotherly Val (Victoria Alcock), any posters he has on his bedroom walls of women are of the Princess Diana variety and he prefers watching soap operas and Westerns with his grandmother or mother (Nancy Sullivan) than playing soccer as almost everyone seems to want him to do.
Like many a closeted boy before him, he’s definitely not part of the mainstream but not even he can bring himself to admit that and as someone who found themselves in the exact same position, it’s easy to see why that is.
After all, we all tell ourselves internal narratives that help to make sense of the world, and when you’re 12 and want desperately not to upset the applecart and want the security of being “normal” (whatever the hell that is), you will waive a fiendishly intense narrative that fits what you want at the time rather than who you are.
At least back in the ’80s when striking out as someone breaking the mold, especially sexually, was not an advisable course of action.
It was already bad enough if you’re someone like Alan that everyone assumed you were gay and acted accordingly, either bullying you or mocking you for it, or encouraging you to be more manly, which in his case meant playing football and kissing girls, neither of which he had much inclination to do.
But if you came out, to yourself and then to others, and you were in the position that Alan (or this reviewer) were in then a less than tolerable would suddenly manage to get somehow even worse.
So you say nothing – to yourself or others and everyone’s happy; well, not really, but what can you do when the choices are bad, more bad and even worse?
While it’s never explicitly addressed in the show, Changing Ends carries this struggle through every highly amusing and quirkily funny episode.
It mines the great disparity between who Alan is and what he and others can admit to beautifully, never once cheapening what’s happening to him with cheap laughs, and always being empathetic, easily done in one sense since Carr writes or sometimes co-writes all the episodes, to the great pressure of trying to convince yourself you will one day be one of the gang.
You won’t of course and we have an adult Carr breaking the fourth wall with amusing regularity in every episode to remind us that he has grown into a proud gay man who is resolutely himself and who has carved out a hugely successful career defying the early expectation placed upon him.
Quite aside from its queer narrative influences, which find buoyant expression from the synth-driven theme music to the various touchstones of young gay life in the closet, Changing Ends succeeds because it shines an affectionately amusing light on the issues of the times.
Alan’s mother Christine, to whom he’s very close and who is maternally hugely protective of him, is firmly stuck in housewife territory but she’s far from playing the part of a docile housewife.
While Alan’s Graham (Shaun Dooley) is far from being an unremitting misogynist, he does unthinkingly reflect the male beliefs of the time, and when he is stupid enough to say these out loud, Christine makes sure he lives to regret it.
In one season two episode, she takes a job doing admin work at the football club and is not shy in combatting all kinds of gender stereotypes, even if in one scene she unconsciously puts her well-meaning foot in it by projecting all kinds of heteronormative assumptions onto a likely lesbian football linesperson.
What Changing Ends does with wit, charm and a playful sense of gleeful mischief is expose how even the most liberal of us can fall prey to unchecked and unexamined ideas of how the world should be, and that much of the problems that beset us, gay or straight, stem from never interrogating our world views.
If that happened more often, then maybe someone like Alan Carr might not have had to grow up in a world framed by assumptions, expectations and long past their use-by date ideas and be indirectly and directly punished for it.
For a sitcom, Changing Ends has a lot of political chutzpah percolating through its narrative veins.
The good thing is that it never goes full polemic on anything, embracing the “spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down” approach and in so doing, serving us real insights and thoughtful truths in the guise of a beautifully written, charming and very funny sitcom that plays itself for laughs as it should but with a big heart, an attentive eye on what life is like when you’re trying to know and ultimately find yourself, and rich characterisation that brings it all alive in amusingly delightful ways.
Changing Ends screens on ITV in the UK and view the ABC in Australia.
Bloopers! Get ready to laugh some more …