“They say you know nothing at eighteen,” runs the very first line of text seen in this week’s incredibly poignant two-part adaptation of Andrew O’Hagan’s 2020 novel Mayflies (BBC One).
“But there are things you know at eighteen that you will never know again.”
One of the year’s best dramas
Hopefully most viewers didn’t spend the week between Christmas and New Year slumped in a turkey-induced coma and swearing off any more television, because they would have missed one of the most powerful pieces of drama of the year.
Written by Andrea Gibb and starring Tony Curran and Martin Compston as old friends Tully and Jimmy, it was done and dusted in two episodes.
Yet it packed in more human emotion than most spun-out streaming series manage in five or six times the running length.
Tully is wayward and free-spirited, but he spent his life building a career as an inspiring schoolteacher, partly following the studious and reserved Jimmy’s example as the first among their friends to go to university.
Told in flashback
We see all this in flashback, as young Tully (Tom Glynn-Carney) and Jimmy (Rian Gordon) enjoy their youth in the Ayrshire of 1986 with friends Tibbs (Mitchell Robertson) and Hogg (Paul Gorman).
In the past, the pair navigate minor family dramas and listen to the music of New Order and the Cocteau Twins, the great milestone of their young and beautifully aimless young lives arriving with a visit to a music festival in Manchester together.
A tragic diagnosis
In the present, Tully calls Jimmy to his side to tell him something important. He has cancer, and not much time to live. His wife Anna (Ashley Jensen) knows… but she doesn’t know he plans to travel to travel to Europe to undergo assisted death before the disease takes his life.
Anna’s beliefs mean he knows she won’t agree with his decision, so Jimmy is the only person he can ask to help him go through with the procedure.
“Don’t let me die like a p***k,” he begs of his friend. “We all die like p***ks,” replies Jimmy.
Given the subject matter, this programme had to be note-perfect as drama and perfectly responsible, and it achieved both.
The present-day performances were all ideal; human and nicely understated, with no sense of distracting dramatic flash about them.
A perfect tribute
The period scenes from ’86, on the other hand, felt like Trainspotting, with a sense of over-emotive physicality which shouted of the characters’ youth and hopeful futures with every smile and song.
It seems so short a time ago, but as Tully’s story demonstrates, a whole lifetime has passed since then.
With music holding such a potent link to the characters’ youths, watching the BBC’s preview in the hours after ‘80s idol Terry Hall’s death felt especially powerful, and doubtless did on transmission too.
The knowledge that the story is partially based on O’Hagan’s own experience with his childhood friend Keith also cuts deep, and only adds to the sense of perfect tribute this production represented.
“You,” said Jimmy to his partner Iona (Tracy Ifeachor), an epiphany dawning. “Here. No f***ing about. This is it… this is everything.” Amen to that.
Mayflies is available on iPlayer.
