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Someone
once said, actually I think it might have been me come to think
of it, that Gregor "Rab C Nesbitt" Fisher was born to
play two roles. Either of the two leads in Waiting For Godot (not
fussed which) and the Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz. Well, I
think "Empty" ticks the Beckett box…
"Empty",
stars Fisher and Billy "has taken growth hormone after the
Ring thing" Boyd as two workmen charged with clearing out empties,
council properties in Glasgow left vacant on the death or otherwise
of the last tenant.
Now,
as luck would have it, I knew a guy who did this very job in the
Dear Green Place and as sits go the job doesn't immediately present
itself as a likely conduit for much in the way of coms. This guy
once had to skip a carpet that had provided the last resting place
for some pair auld guy who'd keeled over deid and lain on said carpet
for several months. I don't think any amount of steam cleaning would've
got those stains out, but anyway…
"Empty"
at one level does exactly what it says on the skip, providing a
void theatrical space for the actors to engage in some very Beckettian
(is that even a word?) riffing on life and everything that goes
with it . The Fisher character is intelligent, self-educated and
resigned to his lot. Boyd's character is about as bright as a blackout
and negotiates life's mysteries by drawing on misremembered scenes
from the movies as a sort of existential filter or something. And?
Well that's it really, there isn't much that "goes on"
and there's a Beckettian conceit if there every was.
In
the first episode real life intruded with the eventual punchline
of sorts that the late auld guy who'd occupied the flat had made
a living as a drug dealer and stashed his stuff in the holds of
some very beautifully made model ships. Metaphor? The traditional
skills of a vanished hard-working class re-cast and put to service
in the new narco-economy of post-industrial Glasgow? Possibly, I've
really no idea.
As
sitcom, "Empty" doesn't really work. There are no real
gags for one thing. The writing is too mannered, theatrical and
feels stagey. But, and it's a big but with smaller buts hanging
off it, the production works. I'm not sure what the fuck it is,
but there's something about the very theatrical nature of the writing
and the performances that delivers.
Maybe
we need a new category to describe something like "Empty"
'cause a sitcom it isnae. It's not at all bad, it's just not a sitcom..
Which
reminds me for some reason of that old Alexei Sayle gag where, for
reasons that need not detain us here, a trio of Godots arrive together
at the scorched tree leading "Vladimir" to remark :"Bloody
typical! You wait all day for a Godot and then three turn up all
at once."
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