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Product Description
Al (Denis Lawson) and Davina Jackson (Joanna Lumley)seem to have the perfect life. At 60, they both look great, enjoy their work (he's a music writer for a newspaper; she works in an art gallery) and having finally said au revoir to their son, are ready to indulge themsleves with a funky centeral London apartment and a retro 70s Silver Shadow Rolls Royce. Still, something, somewhere, somehow doesn't feel quite right. Is it that their 30-year-old son Orlando refuses to acknowledge adulthood? Or that Davina's sister Veronica and her husband Roger intimidate them with their confident grasp of life and comprehensive pension plans? And don't forget the sexual temptation, the professional jealousy and that burning question: is this the life I wanted?
Weathered but luminous, Joanna Lumley (
Absolutely Fabulous) glows in
Sensitive Skin, a lovely comedy-drama from the BBC. Davina Jackson (Lumley), a 61 year-old wife, mother, and art-gallery assistant, has begun hallucinating imaginary friends and the personification of her frustration. Her husband Al (Denis Lawson,
Bleak House) is a bundle of neuroses, while her son Orlando (a brilliant turn by James Lance) is 30 but behaves as if he's barely 13. Over the course of 12 half-hour episodes (six per season), Davina, Al, Orlando, and their friends and family reveal--sometimes with rueful melancholy, sometimes with acidic humor--that getting older doesn't mean getting wiser. Al struggles to be more assertive and just becomes obnoxious; Davina has an affair with a younger man prone to make archeological double-entendres; and their brother-in-law Roger (Nicholas Jones) surrenders his profitable career in finance to become an artist--just as he falls under suspicion of embezzlement. None of the episodes are plot-oriented, yet they move along briskly, driven by elegant, razor-sharp writing and skillful performances from the central cast and superb guest performers like David Warner, Frances de la Tour, Jonathan Miller, Patrick Malahide, and Anthony Head (
Buffy the Vampire Slayer), among others. After the first season there's a dramatic turn; the series loses its footing slightly for a couple of episodes after that, but then unveils the strongest work of the series. Fans of Dennis Potter (
The Singing Detective,
Pennies from Heaven) should definitely see
Sensitive Skin. Lumley is simply wonderful, ranging from arch comedy to heartbreaking sadness with subtle and fluid confidence.
Sensitive Skin is a gem.
--Bret Fetzer
Customer Reviews
Perfect
Sooner of later everyone is going to have to turn 60. Joanna Lumley, seemed destined to never grow up in Ad Fab. She begins this series with a brilliant one liner about hormone therapy reminiscent of the narcissistic lush she once played, but Sensitive Skin is different. It is as real as the problems of growing older. The series takes on all the uncertainty, mortality and regret that comes with age. It does so with black humor lingering looks and pregnant pauses that allow us to fill in the blanks without slowing the pace. Often what is not said is what makes this all too short series such a gem.
You won't find many belly laughs here because the humor is filled with an irony that is visceral. So much of life just doesn't seem to work as it once did for her. We watch as her choices narrow and defeats that would have been brushed side in youth become defining and perhaps insurmountable. We accompany her through the loss of love and the death of friends who can't make the required transitions. In the end, we "settle in" with her as she comes to fully know herself and forge a new life based perhaps on better choices. We are left with a message of hope that life and love go on, proving that 60 is not too late to start over.
2010-06-20
(New Orleans, LA USA) | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 5
A Masterpiece!
The writing, the directing, the acting the, incredible honesty makes this DVD set a must for anyone who longs for story and image that completely satisfies the desire of introspection and the wisdom that comes from it. I have shared this with friends and I must choose my friends well because they feel the same way I do (over-the-top amazement!) and have purchased their own DVD set. I can't say enough about how subtleness is used so daringingly up front. I love "Sensitive Skin"!!! I am so glad a friend told me about it. How else would I have found it! To Hugo Blick, the writer,director, producer; thank you, thank you, thank you--and p-l-e-a-s-e- do more!!!! Hugo Blick is also a great actor and plays the GI in an episode. What a lovely treat that is!
2010-03-29
(Longview, WA. USA) | Helpful Votes: 2 | Rating: 5
Ends just when it's getting really good!
This is a wonderful "bittersweet dramedy" rendered in twelve half-hour episodes. If only there had been more closure to the storyline; the writers/producers leave us after the main character has come to grips with certain elements of her life, but also at the very moment she is embarking on a juicy new "life chapter"! Characters we are just now warming are snatched out from under us as Series 2 (disc 2) ends.
JOANNA LUMLEY's PERFORMANCE
I had never seen Joanna Lumley in a leading role (no, I never did get around to watching Absolutely Fabulous) and was deeply impressed by her work in Sensitive Skin. Here, as a 62-year old woman struggling with an unfulfilling marriage, her out-to-lunch adult son, her bitter sister, and life and death in general, she is oh-so-heartbreakingly good: pensive, quietly intelligent, quietly glamorous, quietly tragic, even, in her way. Her wit is dry but never cutting or sarcastic; you sense she is a more-than-decent person, possibly even a kind one. And she seems to have an air of bittersweet humor about her at all times, as though people's most outrageous, offensive, or hurtful behavior amuses her. But she telegraphs her amusement in a way that makes it seem she is not only smiling over their absurdities, but laughing at herself, too. What I loved best about her was her air of vulnerability.
Her face can be described as a "magnificent ruin": conventionally, model-worthy beautiful, but also slightly craggy with the years, with regret, and with a subdued sort of pain she keeps close to her chest. She is elegantly but heavily made up with dark lip rouge and black eye pencil and softly glowing blush, almost as though the rituals of beauty help ease this unnamed, muted pain she carries around with her at all times.
DISC 1 (SERIES 1)
There is a marked difference between the two discs. The first disc, series 1, is more like a series of vignettes that are loosely related due to the recurring characters and themes. The general vignette subjects include: managing to live with a neurotic long-time spouse who hasn't emotionally resonated with you for years; dealing with an envious sister and her boorish husband; wondering whether you've really "made something" of your life after all; trying to fill the inexplicable holes in your heart with posh flats and Vidal Sassoon haircuts and always coming up short; and being alarmingly pursued by a variety of inappropriate men.
The first few episodes did not really hold my attention all that well, because the writers just drop us into said vignettes and show us a series of characters we don't know who display neurotic, selfish, bizarre, or embarassing behavior. Sometimes I felt my attention wander.
I felt, oddly enough, that there was a whif of CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM about this series. Now, please know that they are vastly different shows with *completely* different approaches and senses of humor. CURB is broad, laugh-out-loud, outrageous comedy rendered in colorful splashes; SKIN is utterly subdued, autumnal, bitterish-sweet "dramedy" that mixes sharp, cutting humor with sometimes heart-wrenching reflections on life and death. But, they are similar in that in both series, the main characters encounter increasingly absurd people who make the main characters, dysfunctional as they themselves might be, seem almost sane in relation to the rest of the world.
I gaurantee that even if you weren't that engaged by the first few episodes, the last episode of this 6-part disc will hook you expertly and reel you in. After that, the show really picks up steam.
DISC 2 (Series 2)
The second disc/series is much more like a traditional serial, with plots and subplots that run throughout all 6 episodes. It is also much more emotionally compelling than the first disc.There are some shocking plot twists throughout, all the way to the last episode. That's about all I can say without giving away spoilers, but I hope you stick with the series until the end.
OTHER IMPRESSIONS
I was so disappointed when I realized BBC had not made any more episodes after these twelve. There are so many characters I wanted to know more about, storylines I wanted to explore in greater depth. I believe HB0 will be producing a re-make of this series starring Kim Cattrell in the Lumley role, but I urge you to see the original version first because I highly doubt the same "autumnal" tone will translate into the American version.
The overall impression of the teleplay, humor, acting, camera work and color palette is indeed one of autumn--the autumns of people's lifespans, but also autumn as a represenation of emotional bruising and bottled up-pain. The somber selections of classical, folk, and pop music combine to create an almost constant elegiac tone; even at the conclusion of the funniest or most amusing scenes, the music reminds us that life is always embroidered with pain, one side lined with humor but the other inevitably lined with suffering.
Denis Lawson is excellent as Lumley's husband; this Scottish actor (Ewan MacGregor's uncle) is highly underrated and I always long to see him on screen more. Pitch-perfect guest stars include luminaries such as Frances De La Tour and Jean Marsh (in a devastating role).
RECOMMENDATION
If you are looking for sharp humor but not for outright comedy; if you don't mind a good dose of the bitter with your sweet (I dont really even think there is a "sweet" here); and if you don't mind not quite knowing "what ultimately happens" to the characters you've grown to be invested in, this series will really speak to you. Be prepared to sit and brood a little bit and perhaps even shed a tear throughout.
2010-02-03
(Urban east coast, USA) | Helpful Votes: 4 | Rating: 4
I'm 64 and loved it--it is how we are today
I bought this dvd series because I so enjoyed Joanna Lumley in AbFab and wanted to see more of her work. Two things struck me about this BBC series: First, this is a realistic telling of what it is like to be in your 60's today. We were "the me generation," it is hard to believe we are in our 60's now--we were important, we set the rules, we partied and we thought we'd go on forever. We still think of ourselves that way. Being 60 today is not like when my Grandmother turned 60. We still drive sports cars, bikes, hike, party, drink, some do drugs, and have sex. Seeing flirting and sexual appetites still strong in people in their 60's is common today--just you wait! The Second thing, I felt was that I really knew these people. Joanna's character's discussions with her halucinatory visitors is typical of someone who is trying to come to terms with getting older. How does it affect me, and how should it affect me? What are the boundaries? How should I be living my life now and how should I represent that. It's totally weird to realize that if you are still waiting for things to happen to you, you have missed most of your life! Mr. Blick, who is writer, director and producer has done an incredible job. He is either 60 or he understands that generation extremely well. This is a wonderful series. The actors are first rate, Joanna Lumley is terrific. When you remember Patsy from AbFab, and see Ms. Lumley in this, you realize what a good actor she is. If you are a fan of hers, grab it.
2009-10-24
(Columbia, MO United States) | Helpful Votes: 13 | Rating: 5
Loved it.
This was different than any show I have seen lately. Very well done and the acting superb.
2009-09-12
| Helpful Votes: 2 | Rating: 5
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