TV GUIDE: Critic's Guide to Weekend TV: Fringe, Primeval, A British Lunch and More!
Nov 11, 2011
by Matt Roush
... SUNDAY
Like a master class in minimalist acting by two of Britain's best (who happen to be veterans of the Harry Potter franchise's character-acting academy), PBS's Masterpiece Contemporary offers a bittersweet repast in The Song of Lunch (check local listings). This intimate and endlessly droll two-character teleplay, starring the withering Alan Rickman and the delectable Emma Thompson, is adapted from a narrative poem by Christopher Reid, and we spend much of the hour drunk on words inside the head of Rickman's unnamed character, an embittered editor and failed poet who obsessively self-analyzes every detail of this awkward lunch date with a long-ago ex-lover (Thompson) who has been happily married for years and now lives in Paris. With occasional cutaways to erotic memories from the past, the camera mostly focuses on close-ups of these two remarkable actors, as the besotted Rickman slips further into an alcoholic haze while Thompson struggles to keep things civil, though she can't help observing he's "out to lunch at your own lunch." It's an awfully tasty aperitif.
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