How Judi Dench and Jay Blades paired up to save sleepy summer telly

Take one eightysomething, Oscar-winning nationwide treasure. Add the exceedingly likeable presenter of one of many best-loved and most tear-jerking exhibits on tv, who simply so occurs to be nice associates with stated nationwide treasure. Let this pair amble across the locations that imply probably the most to them, and open up about themselves within the course of. That is the very profitable recipe for Dame Judi and Jay: The Odd Couple, the one-off sort-of travelogue that aired on Channel 4 on Sunday night, charming viewers in droves (and sure, prompting a few of us to have a bit cry, too).

Dench, 89, and Blades, 54, are the double act we didn’t know we wanted, a vibrant spot in a summer time TV schedule that has felt distinctly lacklustre, bar a short dose of Olympic pleasure. On paper, the veteran actor and the host of The Restore Store have little or no in widespread. Dench made her skilled stage debut in Hamlet on the age of twenty-two and shortly grew to become one of the vital celebrated Shakespearean performers of her era. Blades, in the meantime, was born within the yr that Dench obtained her OBE. He was written off as a troublemaker and confronted racism in school, which he finally left with none {qualifications}; he discovered fame later in life and largely accidentally, after TV producers grew to become occupied with his charity work instructing younger folks tips on how to renovate previous furnishings.

Regardless of their very totally different backgrounds and life tales, although, the duo struck up a friendship when Dench was invited to seem on a particular episode of The Restore Store just a few years again (she introduced alongside a damaged pocket watch, given to her by her beloved late husband Michael Williams – cue a tearful reveal when Blades and his gifted colleagues managed to present it a brand new lease of life). Their closeness is clear from the primary moments of The Odd Couple, when Blades arrives on the actor’s Surrey farmhouse (you would possibly recognise it from her interview with Louis Theroux) and cheerfully shouts “Howdy attractive!” by the use of greeting “the Dame”, as he fondly refers to her. Quickly he’s marvelling on the weight of her gold Oscar statuette – and the truth that his Restore Store ebook is conveniently on show subsequent to it.

As gratifying because it may need been to simply let the digital camera run because the pair catch up and commerce tales and mild jokes – “I’m amazed we will hear one another, he’s so tall,” the diminutive Dench chuckles about her pal, who stands at 6ft 3in tall – they do have some enterprise to take care of over the course of the hour-long present. They’ve determined (and/or been instructed by their manufacturing firm) to revisit a number of the locations that imply probably the most to them, to allow them to every be taught extra concerning the different’s again story. Quickly Judi’n’Jay are promoting plantain at Ridley Street market, which he’d go to along with his mum as a baby, and studying tips on how to scratch and blend data from a DJ pal. Then, they’re heading to the Stratford-upon-Avon pub that Dench would frequent with Williams once they had been performing with the Royal Shakespeare Firm.

In fact, the idea of two well-known folks going off on a televised jaunt is nothing new. In reality, we appear to have reached peak celeb travelogue lately. TV commissioners have been despatching pairs of sunshine entertainers to numerous vacationer hotspots with chaotic abandon, and there are actually few European international locations that haven’t lately performed host to a pair of mildly well-known, normally male comedians. However the focus tends to be on tedious banter and hijinks somewhat than deep connections (be that with the opposite celeb or the locations they go to). In The Odd Couple, each cease on their itinerary can also be an excuse for Blades and Dench to share reminiscences and unlock the kinds of significant conversations that may not normally movement authentically whereas the cameras are on.

What’s significantly putting about their pairing is the truth that neither appears to be mugging for the digital camera or jostling to make themselves the primary focus. Dench takes Blades to the Previous Vic, the place she made her stage debut all these years in the past, and recites a Shakespeare sonnet on stage, to a lot applause from her pal. It’s adopted by an equally transferring second when Blades, who learnt to learn only a few years in the past after fighting dyslexia all his life, performs a passage from Hamlet, with just a few low-key pointers from Dench, who appears to know precisely how greatest to let her pal shine. Later, once they go to Dench’s previous household house in Warwickshire, Blades offers her with unobtrusive emotional assist. And he’s clearly affected by the power of Dench’s emotions for her late husband: “Everyone ought to be discovering a love like that,” he says quietly to the digital camera after they go to Williams’s grave. It’s an particularly poignant second provided that Blades appears to have been by way of a troublesome interval in his private life lately: earlier this yr, his spouse introduced she was leaving him, then the loss of life of his uncle reportedly prompted him to take a step again from filming The Restore Store.

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They may not journey very far in sensible phrases, however their journey is an emotional odyssey. It’s very clear that they enjoyment of each other’s firm, and seeing that pleasure play out on display is sort of a dose of serotonin. It’s additionally a reminder that connection can come up in surprising circumstances, between individuals who, at first look, couldn’t appear extra totally different – that friendships might be shocking and great at any age.