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Victoria Wood RIP
Apr. 21st, 2016 10:56 amI was watching odd bits and pieces on YouTube last night- including most of Acorn Antiques, after which I went and sat with my mother for a while and watched Channel 4 News and it was impossible to take any of it seriously. No one ever did a better job of exposing the absurdities of TV than Victoria Wood.
She was a brilliant writer; she relished words and enjoyed putting them in unlikely conjunctions; no one ever did better bathos. She created lovely characters too. As a performer she was immensely generous- happy to shadow other actors- like Julie Walters and Celia Imrie- and give them the best lines. Dinnerladies is one of the great sitcoms.
I could go on. She was a terrific stand-up, a composer of deathless comic songs; latterly she'd begun to make her mark in straight roles. Usually when we say we're going to miss a performer what we really mean is we liked something they did decades ago but with Wood it's literally true. She was still a force. We were still wondering what she'd do next...
She was a brilliant writer; she relished words and enjoyed putting them in unlikely conjunctions; no one ever did better bathos. She created lovely characters too. As a performer she was immensely generous- happy to shadow other actors- like Julie Walters and Celia Imrie- and give them the best lines. Dinnerladies is one of the great sitcoms.
I could go on. She was a terrific stand-up, a composer of deathless comic songs; latterly she'd begun to make her mark in straight roles. Usually when we say we're going to miss a performer what we really mean is we liked something they did decades ago but with Wood it's literally true. She was still a force. We were still wondering what she'd do next...
