Don’t Forget the Driver: All aboard the tragi-comic bus voyage around the battered British psyche

Tonight, BBC Two, 10pm
Alastair McKay30 April 2019

A few years ago, Tim Crouch wrote a horrible play called The Author.

It was more of a structure than a text, and though it took place within a theatre, there was no stage, only an audience. Within that audience, the actors spoke up, guiding the evening in a way that felt accidental, but also exploitative.

I hated it but have never forgotten it.

The event was so confrontational that it led the audience into extremes. You couldn’t say you had been entertained, but something strange had taken place. It was a play in which the audience was invited to reflect on the role of its own prejudices and expectations, and the way those forces shaped its understanding of confusing events.

New comedy: Don't Forget The Driver on BBC Two 
BBC / Sister Pictures

Which brings us to Brexit. Structurally, Don’t Forget the Driver is quite different from that experimental play, in that it exists within a familiar format — the six-part comedy. You could argue about the comedy bit, because the laughs are muted, if they are laughs at all. The prevailing moods of this comedy drama are bewilderment and unease.

It’s not all Crouch’s work, of course. The concept is his but the writing is shared with Toby Jones, who also stars as Peter, the coach driver of the title. As an actor, Jones brings an undertow of vulnerability to his work. In Detectorists, his character wasn’t aware of his own absurdity. Here he is a spectator in his own life. And that life involves taking coach trips of foreign visitors to notable English sights.

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That, at least, is the bit of Peter’s life that is under control. When he’s driving his bus to predictable locations and soliciting tips in the wicker basket of the dashboard, he knows what he’s doing. But what about the rest of his life? What about England? What is he to do when he finds a body on Bognor beach? How should he react when a migrant stows away in the back of his coach? He does nothing, and feels guilty. Accused of looking like a man with piles, he replies: “I am a man with piles.” And look, he has a comfort cushion in his coach.

The viewer will, of course, bring their own prejudices on this trip. I brought my own comfort cushion by suggesting that the series is about Brexit, when actually it is about forgotten people on the neglected fringes of England trying to live quietly while the extremities of international politics wash up on their shores. Is that the same thing?

Maybe. Visually, it’s hard to tell, because the design is heavily indebted to the photography of Martin Parr, existing in a state that fluctuates between mockery and realism. Is it ironic or empathic? That depends on the viewer. Maybe it’s neutral. This England looks like the present but feels like the past. Listen to the music: The Human League, Simply Red, Gerry Rafferty, Duran Duran. In the scene where Peter makes a dramatic bus getaway, is that a comedic blast of Bohemian Rhapsody?

This week, the significant line is given to a Japanese tourist, played on the fringes of stereotype by Tsuwayuki Saotome. “To thine own self be true,” he says, quoting Hamlet’s Polonius while the bus radio skips the light fandango.

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