Thora Hird

Isolation, suppressed emotions and the trials of domesticity: Why Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads is ripe for remake

• The past few months haven’t been great for television. Audience figures and streaming subscriptions may have skyrocketed but, behind the scenes, the view is pretty bleak. Filming for existing series remains indefinitely postponed and commissioning has all but ground to a halt. In a sure sign that the apocalypse is here, we have finally run out of EastEnders episodes.Nonetheless, some new projects have found ingenious ways of working around social distancing restrictions, in the process producing some brilliant dramatic moments. Staged, a semi-scripted comedy with Michael Sheen and David Tennant, finds the pair ostensibly rehearsing for a post-lockdown Pirandello play, though, mainly, they squabble, riff and reminisce. The BBC Four anthology series, Unprecedented, features a smorgasbord of fictionalised lockdown experiences, from teen group chats and awkward work meetings to a homeless man talking to his dog over Zoom. Now we have Talking Heads, a remake of Alan Bennett’s TV monologues, delivered directly to camera, which were first screened in the late Eighties.