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| Michaela Coel as Tracey in Chewing Gum. Photograph: Dave King |
Council estate of mind: Michaela Coel’s Chewing Gum is smart, bawdy and brilliant
The rising writer and actor’s Tower Hamlets-set sitcom about twentysomething sexual awakenings puts authentic voices on screen
“My mum was gonna name me Alyssa, which means sweet angel in Indian,” says Tracey Gordon to camera in new E4 comedy Chewing Gum, “but when I came out, she looked at me and called me Tracey.” Written and created by Michaela Coel, who plays Tracey, and based on her award-winning play of almost the same name, Chewing Gum is full of delicately observed moments like this. Twenty-four years old, Tracey lives with her mum and sister in Tower Hamlets, stuck between her oversexed best friend Candice and patronising, limp wetwipe of a boyfriend, Ron. Ron is trying to raise her from deprivation, namely by denying her the peen, and is good for the sum total of two things: memorising Bible verses and making you realise, years later, what a lucky escape you had. When he gets ploughed down by a car, as happens halfway through the first episode, it couldn’t have come soon enough. As far as the dramatic arc is concerned, this event opens the, er, floodgates to an immensely pent-up Tracey getting her sexually naive rocks off.
What I love about Chewing Gum is – and I say this as someone who was born, grew up and still happily lives in a setting eerily similar to Tracey’s – that unlike literally every other depiction of a council estate today, there is not one single solitary shot of moody, dilapidated blocks, boys with pitbulls, or weathered men trying to look menacing next to a Nissan Sunny. Instead, Tracey is devoutly Christian and celibate, and blanches at some of her friends’ coarseness. So do I, to be fair, and at times it’s a challenge. If I have to hear the words “bare pussy” out of my TV, though, I’m glad they’re spoken by Tracey and Candice (Danielle Walters) for the authentic cadence alone.
Wincing through studiedly urban accents is a unique torture for any audience, but at times I wonder whether it’s a tool to erode what’s left of working-class morale. If anything can finish the job that mine closures and the demonisation of chicken nuggets started, it’s a 30-year-old Oxbridge graduate saying the word “bredrin”.
It’s a bizarre and sad fact that, television commissioning-wise, anything niche (and, for some reason, in TV, black Britons are considered niche) is often passed over for the more broadly relatable. So I hope, over the course of this series, the gallows humour formed in adversity is not scrubbed out to make way for the common denominator of gross-out shagging. Given that Michaela Coel’s incredible timing, warmth and gift for physical comedy basically make her, in my eyes, the second coming of Lucille Ball, I feel she could carry it off whatever.
The subject of unapologetic brilliance brings us neatly to Nadiya GBBO’s eyebrows. The Great British Bake Off, which has carried me through summer on a wave of royal icing, sabayon and meringue like the giant sponge-happy baby I am, reaches its final this week. Owing to deadlines and strict cake embargos, it’s a mystery who’s made it through, but I’m calmly confident that Nadiya is still there. The fact that she has consistently been the best baker is immaterial; what she does with her brows is pure poetry, from stricken to heart-wrenching to envy of every goth in the UK in the time it takes to whip up some fondant icing. The reason that Bake Off is so gently docile isn’t because its fans are quivering, conflict-averse wusses – though we are – but because the main draw of the programme is in its appeal to base gluttony. Fights and tension tend to curdle all the iced, triple-carb wonders a bit. Nadiya’s eyebrows, therefore, provide all the drama we need. They are also the only things I’ve seen stand up to pastry bastard Paul Hollywood and his glare, designed to send icy shards into contestants’ hearts. “Mmm, strong flour is it?” Paul might say with a smirk I’d quite like to wipe off with the dough hooks of a De’Longhi. Nadiya has it under control, forming those magnificent brows into a pair of daggers that send him running to the judging room. Nadiya’s eyebrows, I salute you ~~.
Chewing Gum starts tonight, 10pm, E4; The Great British Bake Off continues tomorrow, 8pm, BBC1
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