The Power of Parker, season 2 review: come for the broad humour, stay for the killer 1990s soundtrack

Telegraph

2 days ago

If you're aged 65 or over, our survey says, you are watching more television than any other age group in the country. Extrapolating further from this (admittedly fictional) survey, it's a fair bet that nostalgia for past times will bullseye those remote controls.
Which makes The Power of Parker (BBC One) a canny bit of demographic-baiting comedy. Sian Gibson and Paul Coleman's tale of Stockport sisters eventually doing it for themselves should really be called I Heart the (Early) '90s, it's so awash with loving period detail.
Walkmans, answerphones, curly fries and more play key supporting roles as dithering heroines Kath and Diane stumble their way to a self-awareness that amounts to realising Martin Parker, the man to whom they have mystifyingly devoted their lives is, to put it politely, a… waste of space.
We've moved on 'two years or so' from the first series, which climaxed with Parker's electrical store going up in an inferno, taking Martin along with it. Except, of course, he survived and, thanks to some hula-hooping exposition involving insurance fraud and a Chinese takeaway, we pick up the threads with long-suffering Diane (Rosie Cavaliero) running the rebuilt store but now under the thumb of Sandy Cooper, another sexist dinosaur (Steve Pemberton) because that's how all men were in the '90s.
The comedy is still broad, slapped on in the old school style, which substitutes endless asides and one-liners for actual conversation, and does at times feel contrived. Yet somewhere around the middle of this run I began to be won over. The mood switches from a Phoenix Nights pastiche to a curious spin on Shallow Grave, Danny Boyle's hit 1994 debut movie in which… well, let's just say things take a dark turn, we are in spoiler land.
The mood-switch opens the door to a very funny sequence in which Sian Gibson's perky Kath, opening up to a cop chum, floats the idea of Julia Roberts, Bruce Willis and Pat Butcher (aka EastEnders legend Pam St Clement) starring in the same movie thriller. How did that never get made?
But it wasn't the increasingly black comedy which made my critical claws retract: it was the killer soundtrack. I now have a self-made Spotify Power of Parker playlist stuffed full of brilliant 1990s classics – shout out to Julian Cope's World Shut Your Mouth and Crucified by Army of Lovers – that add a subtlety to the story it quite possibly doesn't merit.
The weak link is Conleth Hill's off-kilter portrayal of oily Martin Parker. Hill feels miscast. While he's adept at giving us a dose of Martin's toxic masculinity, he's much less convincing when laying on the silver fox charm that supposedly has women falling under his spell.
So much so that – 11 episodes in, counting series one – when the two sisters finally have a lightbulb moment and chorus, 'How the hell did we both fall for that?' I'll admit it prompted a celebratory exclamation of, 'Finally!' from yours truly. Which surprised me. I didn't know I cared.