DEBORAH ROSS: Service with a snarl …at £1,200 a night!
A Very British Country House
Sunday, Channel 4
(so moreishly terrible)
Care
Sunday, BBC1
Rating: 
If I could run off with any man, and that man would have me, then I would run off with Mr Thomas Kochs, formerly general manager of Claridge’s, now general manager of the Corinthia hotel in London (A Hotel For The Super Rich & Famous, BBC1). Nothing is too much trouble for Mr Thomas Kochs. I call him Thomas ‘For Sure’ Kochs in my head, and he would be a dream to have at your side. ‘Thomas, can you take the bins out?’ ‘For sure.’ ‘Thomas, can you wait in for a delivery this afternoon?’ ‘For sure.’ He is also soothing and gracious and takes phenomenal pride in his work, as do his staff, and he knows who to call to replace a bulb in a £6 million Baccarat chandelier, which could prove handy. I don’t know what I could offer in return exactly, but I would stand between him and the television so he never has to see A Very British Country House. In this way, I could spare him the pain and hurt of watching hospitality performed so charmlessly. No, Thomas Kochs, no! You must not witness this!
Head butler Michael in A Very British Country House. There is so much heavy drapery you wonder it doesn’t bring the old place down
A Very British Country House is the behind-the-scenes documentary about Cliveden House, and it may be that if A Hotel For The Super Rich & Famous was not being shown concurrently (it concluded last week), the place wouldn’t seem as awful, but that’s just giving it the benefit of the doubt, which it may not deserve.
This is the Buckinghamshire stately home where Roosevelt once stayed, and Winston Churchill, and it may not have been decorated since. There is so much heavy drapery you wonder it doesn’t bring the old place down. But it’s not the tired decor. Or even the filthy-rich guests with the demands that seem perfectly normal to them, like the woman who insisted on a change of room because being too near the pool was ‘claustrophobic’. It’s the service.
The hotel is chronically understaffed. The sommelier is doubling as the restaurant manager. A wedding has to be served by agency staff who, says the head waiter, ‘don’t work fast enough… they don’t understand’. So the guests are paying top dollar for what exactly? And if you don’t respect your staff, how can you expect your staff to respect the guests, which they don’t. They sneer at the guests behind their back. There was an extraordinary Chinese wedding, where the bride arrived with a 13-strong photography and video team. (Eight thousand pictures were taken, all told.) She wanted the pink flowers out front changed for yellow ones. Michael, the head butler, sighed heavily over that, but Michael? Aren’t you meant to be in the business of giving people what they want, no matter how absurd? One time a guest called down to complain that his kettle was clogged with limescale, which was much mocked by the night staff, while I was thinking: £1,200 a night and you still get a kettle in the room? How cheap is that? And, doesn’t this guest realise you can get that at a Premier Inn?
This is not something Thomas Kochs would recognise as hospitality. He leads from the front. He treats every guest’s whim with the utmost respect. His attention to detail is such that crockery has to be laid out with all the stripes going in the same direction. He would be horrified by A Very British Country House and would thank me for standing between him and the television. If I can’t bring anything else to our relationship, I can bring that. For sure.
Care was co-written by Jimmy McGovern and starred Sheridan Smith and Alison Steadman, which gives three reasons to watch, right there, and two minutes in I already had a lump in my throat, I have to say. This was the story of a single mum, Jenny (Smith), trying to do the best for her mother, Mary (Steadman), after she has a stroke followed by vascular dementia. Jenny wants to care for her at home, but it’s impossible so they must negotiate a system that wants to eject Mary quickly. Mary was subjected to the ‘kitchen test’ because if she can make a cup of tea for herself the hospital can discharge her. Mary eats the tea bag. Jenny and her sister Claire (Sinead Keenan) are horrified and thankful at the same time. That rang so true.
It was beautifully observed and beautifully performed, but even though it’s based on the experience of McGovern’s co-writer, Gillian Juckes, there were moments that jarred. Mini state-of-the-nation speeches were shoehorned in. Claire sometimes became Liverpudlian. And the ending seemed too fairy tale. Mary was finally granted access to ‘continuing care’ and a care home so fabulous I kept expecting Disney fireworks to arc above it. How has the NHS kept ‘continuing care’ so secret? And wouldn’t it break the country financially if it were otherwise? Unfair to expect answers, I suppose, and we all know a Mary, or will be a Mary one day, and it could be worse. We could end up at Cliveden.
