Review: Calendar Girls 10 Years On, BBC1 (From Blackpool Citizen)

Review: Calendar Girls 10 Years On, BBC1

10:47am Thursday 11th June 2009

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A DECADE ago the normally sleepy Yorkshire Dales village of Rylstone was suddenly swarming with press. Not because anything particularly untoward had happened, unless you count 11 middle-aged members of the local Women’s Institute doffing off for a calendar, that is.

Inspired by the death of John Baker, the husband of Angela, who eventually became one of the Calendar Girls, the women, after a few drinks in the pub one night, decided to strip off in an attempt to raise money for Leukaemia Research.

“A couple of glasses of wine and I was running home as Miss November”, says one. A couple of million quid further and they’re off again . . .

This documentary, narrated by Patricia Hodge, trawls through the well-told story, which has graced stage and screen, and brings it bang-up-to-date with filming for the new calendar.

“The props will have to be a lot larger and a bit lower,” says one model, probably correctly, seeing as the women this time around range in age from 57 to 75.

In between pictures of the ‘girls’ attempting to get fit for the shoot, we are shown images of them knitting, flower arranging and baking cakes just in case we had forgotten what Women’s Institutes do.

Incidentally, in case you thought WIs were a thing of the past, there is a new one starting up in Horwich, which will do all the traditional stuff as well as bringing the organisation into the 21st century, but that’s another story.

Since the original photo shoot, the husbands of the 11 women have apparently become known as Mr January, February etc. I’ll be Mr December then . . .

According to the women it never changed their lives . . . well, apart from the constant press attention, the film, stage show, meeting Julie Walters and Helen Mirren and being invited to all the top showbiz do’s, probably not.

As Angela says: “John had just died. All these exciting things were happening but it was a really hard time and we did it in memory of John and to raise money for Leukaemia Research.”

There was something of a fall-out between the women regarding the film and five of them left the project.

The models are nervous as the launch of the new project dawns at Harvey Nichols in Leeds, but the press are again out in force and 4,000 copies of the calendar are sold within 24 hours.

Obviously, the idea spawned lots of imitations — a few good, most bad — including, strangely, a calendar featuring near-naked game-keepers.

All of which gives me an idea. Are you up for it colleagues? No! Oh well, looks like it’s just me then . . .

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