One Fine Day

I was not the target demographic when I saw this

I can almost remember the elegiac melancholy that pervaded the 90 minutes or so of its running time

I am a big fan of Dave Allen, which is why I watched this play, and the experience was transformative

It showed me what being an adult might entail: nothing is certain, nothing works out, nothing makes sense

It is an incredible loss that DA was never given another role to move us in this way, but as a swan song it doesn't get any better

I remember that after the broadcast there was an earnest discussion where Frears was challenged by some critics who seemed to be from a different century, a different world completely

I'm not even a Stephen Frears fan, but even as a thirteen year old I knew those critics were clueless, irrelevant, and blind to the beauty of this work

Thank You DA and may your God go with you

Most viewers know British director Stephen Frears from his later career as a successful commercial director, including for Hollywood with such accomplished work as The Grifters. Less well known are his skillful earlier Tv adaptations of plays written by the brilliant Alan Bennett. Often these Tv plays carry their main strengths in the dialogue and acting but in the case of One Fine Day, with its long stretches of mostly visual scenes where the protagonist is camped out alone in an empty office high rise, with excerpts (strikingly used) of opera on the track, the role of the director in visualizing Bennett's ideas is the factor that makes the difference.

The play is also memorable for stand up comic Dave Allen's unusual role as a melancholy, timid and frustrated estate agent and for its devastating portrait of a sales culture. (in the field of real estate, it gives the more well known David Mamet "Glengarry Glen Ross" a run for its money.)