Holding, Episode 1, Review: A Charming Drama – Once You Find Out What’s Going On

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When I finished watching the first episode Hold on (ITV), based on Graham Norton’s debut novel, I came back and watched it again. Not because I enjoyed it – even though I did – but because for the first half hour I tried to figure out what was going on.

It took me a while, for example, to find out that the three women who live in the big house are sisters and were not related to another woman who lived with her mother. And that Evelyn from the big house (Charlene McKenna from Bloodlands and Peaky Blinders) and Brid (Siobhán McSweeney of Derry Girls and The Great Pottery Throwdown) were once in a relationship with their mother, who apparently had no type because it would be hard to find two women, looking less alike.

What about why local Bobby ate his sandwiches at a house that was about to be demolished, meaning he was conveniently in place when the bones of the aforementioned man were discovered buried in the garden? Find me. And did the guy who had sex with Evelyn in an abandoned ambulance really wear a school tie, which means this woman knocking at 40 is sleeping with a schoolboy?

This can happen if you adapt the novel for television, as introducing characters to a page is easier to do. But when I finally realized who is who and what is what, I found it all very charming.

Norton’s best creation is PJ Collins, a “blown up” cop whose work is usually nothing more exciting than disputes over paint colors. Collins, played by Conleth Hill, is a sweet but lonely enjoyer of the comfort of spending the night with the owner (Brenda Fricker, majestic as ever), who serves him huge full Irish breakfasts. Just watching the sausages simmer for half a pound of butter was enough to make me wonder about the rate of heart disease in Ireland.

Here’s the eccentricity – the opening scene is Fricker riding a motor scooter through town and Father Ted Pauline McLynn calls the comedy a city employee – and Norton also wants to show that modern life has touched this corner of West Cork. There is racial diversity, a gay woman planning an escape to San Francisco, and an unusual piece of salty language. Norton, along with director Kathy Burke, ensures we don’t go too far down the path of whimsy.

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