A serio-comedy piece looking at the relationships between women and the effect upon them of their relationships with men.

Screaming depicted three intelligent women, all aged about 40, who share a house. The trio are former schoolfriends and each, at the present, is without a male partner. But there is a further, fundamental link between them, one that, initially, they do not realise: they have all been sexually involved with the same man, Ralph. All three experienced their time with him differently: Beatrice's affair with Ralph was clandestine; Rachael now likes to think that he is dead; and Annie fondly recalls the joys of their sexual activity.

The naturally unfolding dialogue, melancholic situations and slow pace of Screaming immediately marked it out from the pack, but it was treated by the BBC as traditional sitcom, scheduled in a peak-time BBC1 slot and recorded in front of a studio audience. The writer and at least one of her actresses (Wilton) tried to convince the corporation that the series would work better without a live audience, and had the show been presented on BBC2 they might have won the point, but, post-Bread, Lane was considered hot stuff and the BBC decided, accordingly, that a hot slot was appropriate. This and other Lane tragi-comedy hybrids also seemed to confuse critics, who reviewed them as if they were standard sitcoms that were short on laughs. To this end, Lane's less obvious work might have fared better if it was perceived as a new genre, like the Americans' 'dramady'.

Mark Lewisohn

Last Update: 07:01:2002