Cutting It - A Guide To The First Series (Cutting It)

Member Name: karenuk

Product:	Cutting It
Date:	23/05/02 (507 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Excellent drama, Compelling, Great acting

Disadvantages: It's finished for now!

The first series of Cutting It finished this week. There is a new series promised next year. In the meantime, here’s a rundown of what you missed if you didn’t see it and a few reminders for those that did. Yes, it contains spoilers – what do you expect? ;-)

CUTTING IT

Tuesday nights, 9-10pm, BBC1, conveniently straight after the wonderful Holby City.

Directed by Andy DeEmmony (Red Dwarf, Spitting Image, At Home With The Braithwaites)
Written by Debbie Horsfield (Making Out, The Riff Raff Element, Born To Run)

MAIN CAST

Allie Henshall ~ Sarah Parish (b. 1969, main TV credit - Hearts and Bones)
Gavin Ferraday ~ Jason Merrells (b. 1968, Casualty, Queer As Folk)
Mia Bevan ~ Amanda Holden (b. 1971, Kiss Me Kate, The Grimleys, Hearts and Bones)
Finn Bevan ~ Ben Daniels (b. 1964, Conspiracy, Madeline)
Darcey Henshall ~ Angela Griffin (b. 1976, Coronation Street, Holby City)
Sydney Henshall ~ Sian Reeves (b. 1965, In a Land Of Plenty)
Ruby Ferris ~ Lucy Gaskell (Aged 21, Cutting It is her first professional credit)
Shane Ince – James Midgley (Emmerdale)
Eugene Eubank ~ Pierce Quigley (Queer As Folk 2, Prime Suspect 3)
Brodie Henshall ~ Annette Badland (a long CV listing credits since 1975, including Bergerac, Lace, etc.)
Tom Henshall ~ Bill Thomas (The Missing Postman, Bodger and Badger)

SUMMARY – Part One : The Basics (No spoilers!)

Hmm, where to start? Believe me, there’s a lot gone on…

It is set in Manchester where a married couple, Allie and Gavin have a very successful hairdressing business called Henshall Ferraday. It’s the kind of establishment that wins awards and does well for itself.

Amongst the staff are Allie’s sisters – Sydney and Darcey. There’s also a camp bloke called Shane and a junior called Ruby.

Just when things seem to be going well, a rival hairdressers
sets up business across the road. It is called Blade Runner and is owned by another married couple, Mia and Finn Bevan.

But these two are not strangers to Allie and Co. Mia has wormed her way into their private parties and has been a familiar face recently. Finn’s face is even more familiar to Allie…

SUMMARY – Part Two : Where It Gets Complicated (Spoilers galore!)

Right! So you’re with me so far? This is where it gets confusing. You may have to read it through more than once…

Hold onto your hats…

Allie has been married to Gavin for ages and everything seems to be going fine, except for a regular argument about whether or not to have kids. Gavin is keen, Allie isn’t. As Gavin finds out along the way, this is because Allie had a baby some eighteen years ago.

Mia and Finn have a slightly different take on the parenting issue. She’s broody, he isn’t. He’s a bit of a sleazebag, he has a string of affairs and one night stands, which Mia tries to pretend she doesn’t know about, publicly adoring her little ‘Tigger’ while hurting inside.

It turns out that Finn and Allie go way back. He was her first love, the cause of her broken heart and the father of her child. She had a daughter which she gave birth to – unbeknown to Finn, who had done a swift runner in the opposite direction – and had adopted, at the insistence of her mother.

Allie regrets this though and still has to live with the guilt and sadness. Little does she know that she sees her daughter every day. Yes, Ruby, the salon junior, has found out who her mum is (Not difficult, it was on the birth certificate!) and applied for a job there, so she could get to see what she was really like.

Allie’s family has more than its fair share of skeletons in the cupboard anyway. The Henshalls are a mixed up bunch. Brodie and Tom, their parents, are an o
ddly matched couple. She’s a bossy, domineering, tactless old cow and he’s a meek and mild much put upon man.

Allie has two sisters – Sydney and Darcey. Even weirder than having a sister with a bloke’s name is the fact that the whole family are white, except for Darcey! After apparently believing the old ‘genetic throwback’ story, it soon comes out that Darcey is the result of a fling with a black American singer – who turns up in one episode and doesn’t even remember Brodie. Presumably she didn’t look like the back end of a bus in 1970-something!

Sydney is a tart-with-a-heart kind of character. She has bad dress sense, bad taste in men and seems to have a sign over her head saying ‘USE ME!’ Darcey is gorgeous, but fancies an older man who looks like an anorexic, wrinkly gangster. But he has lots of money and can set her up nicely with a penthouse flat, so that could be the attraction.

Then there’s Eugene, a nerdy footie mad computer geek whose hairstyle went out of date some thirty years ago and his clothes sense is still waiting to come into fashion. But he’s a sweetie. When Ruby decides to try and get him into bed for a dare, she realises he’s actually really kind and lovely. And so the most unlikeliest of couples blossoms…

There’s also Shane, a camp blond stylist who does a bit of double agent work on the side. A finger in every pie, sold to the highest bidder and thankfully, shat on from a great height by most people.

As the series progresses, all the loose ends (and there are lots of them!) tie up…

In the final episode…
Finn fixes it for Mia to win the big hairdressing competition.
Allie arranges to meet her daughter on her 18th birthday – only to find she already knew her!
Ruby gets to find out who her father is, only to discover he tried to seduce her once!
Allie chooses betw
een loveable, secure, handsome, reliable Gavin and love-rat arsehole sh*tbag Finn – and goes off with FINN!!! (Stupid woman!)

MY OPINION

The series didn’t grab me in the first episode, but I did watch it again the next week – probably because it followed my favourite programme, Holby City, and I couldn’t be bothered to change channels! It soon became one of my favourite programmes and on my unmissable list. I am already looking forward to the second series.

The characters seemed quite hard and unsympathetic at first, but over the episodes, you got to see all their different sides and learn more about their backgrounds. The only one that I didn’t really take to was Shane, but all the others were wonderfully rounded and sketched, so you really cared for them.

The acting was excellent throughout, with all the cast performing very well. There were some great laugh out loud comic moments, plus a lot of sadness and crying and all this was portrayed convincingly.

The main four characters – Mia, Finn, Allie and Gavin – had the most to do, but the lesser characters often had some brilliant scenes. I especially enjoyed the rapport between Eugene and Ruby, which highlighted the softer side of her nature. I also loved Tom Henshall - the father – who became much more self-assured and assertive as the series went on, so you really felt for him and admired him for finally standing up to his awful wife.

Writing some of the plotlines out makes it sound rather farcical and totally unrealistic, but it works. You get drawn in and soon believe it all, becoming completely wrapped up in that world – which is surely a sign of a good TV programme. I definitely recommend it. Compelling, involving and brilliant.

WEBSITE

http://www.bbc.co.uk/drama/cutting_it.shtml

Biographical data from www.imdb.com

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