The Inbetweeners
meets Essex Man via Life on Mars. There’s a lot to admire visually in White
Gold, set in 1983 and created by Inbetweeners writer Damon Beesley: the
double-breasted shiny suits, Carol’s frizzed blonde perm, James Buckley’s Eddie
Shoestring moustache, the motors, the clunking great videos and camcorders,
giant computers with green typefaces and lots of stonewashed denim. Plus a
soundtrack that includes Ian Dury, the Fun Boy Three and lots of disco.
Vincent Swan played by Ed Westwick is too brash and predatory
to be a likeable rogue and sometimes the show lapses into caricatures, but White Gold has certainly captured the
era of Harry Enfield’s Loadsamoney and Simon Heffer’s depiction of Essex Man. Stanford-le-Hope-raised
Beesley knows his white stuff, as his dad was indeed in double glazing, selling
plastic windows to people who had bought their council homes. Indeed, my school
reunion in the 1990s sill had plenty of double-glazing salesmen.
There’s always going to be plenty of entertainment from the
blokey dialogue between Inbetweeners stars Joe Thomas and James Buckley. It’s
also packed with filthy language and filthier sex. For the Essex aficionado we've already seen a trip to Southend with chips on the
beach, a school trip from Basildon, a CB radio meet-up at Thorndon Country Park, a dogging session in the Essex woods, a Ramada hotel awards ceremony on the edge of Chelmsford and a Cachet sales room that is probably in Billericay. Minder
did eighties rogues better, but it’s still nice to hear words like “dipstick”
again in a show about working glass anti-heroes caught up in the Thatcherite dream.
White Gold is airing on BBC Two and the full series is available on iPlayer.
