We must just bow our heads and accept it. Some commissions are unavoidable, and Dame Judi and Jay: The Odd Couple is one of them. Someone gets wind of the fact that nearly-nonagenarian national treasure and probably the greatest actor of her generation Judi Dench and 54-year-old furniture restorer Jay Blades, who grew up on an east London council estate and has dyslexia, have become firm friends since she appeared on his show The Repair Shop two years ago. Their names begin with the same letter. The summer schedules need filling with stuff that doesn’t matter in the slightest. And lo, a one-hour travelogue is born, as the pair take each other to visit places that have meant the most to them during their very different lives.
Blades takes “the Dame” as he generally calls her to the venerable Ridley Road market in Dalston, a hub for the local Black community in his childhood and where he went every weekend with his mother as she collected gossip and bargains in equal measure. “Oh, this is heaven!” says the Dame, clearly an inveterate shopper, as she picks up gewgaw after gewgaw despite Blades’ attempts to rein her in. Inevitably, the genuinely interesting material – simply watching the two of them chat, banter and laugh together, seeing the authenticity of their relationship and letting a little wonder at the miracle of human connection creep in – must be interrupted by stunts such as getting them to take over a market stall and sell plantain to (busy and unimpressed) customers. Later there is a pub quiz in the local boozer, where a young Dench and her new husband Michael Williams – “the love of my life” – spent much of their time when they lived in Stratford-upon-Avon, that serves much the same irritating purpose.
In between the stunts, there are many moments that move. Dame Judi returning to the Old Vic, where she made her London debut at 22 as Ophelia in Hamlet, and standing almost overcome on its stage again for the first time in more than 60 years. “I never heard of Shakespeare at school,” says Blades, standing in the stalls. “Do a sonnet! Anything!” She gives him number 18 and it doesn’t matter if it’s the first time you’ve heard it or the thousandth – she makes it new and we are all Blades, agog in the stalls at what she can do. “So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.”
In turn, he reads her the “To be, or not to be” speech which, especially for anyone who saw his documentary about learning to read at the age of 51, carries a weight all of its own. She lifts him unobtrusively over the stumbling blocks of “opposing”, “consummation” and “devoutly”. It is a microcosmic version of actor and director in rehearsal and it is intimate, beautiful and over far too soon so that we may continue with the rubbish bits, such as travelling down the Thames on a speedboat past MI6 headquarters because the Dame played M in those James Bond films.
But we do get to meet the woman whom Blades credits with saving him from a life of violence and crime – Janet, who despite having two children to look after by the age of 17, founded a youth club to create a safe space and provide food and boundaries for children, like Blades, who needed them. “You created this childhood that was unbelievable,” he tells her. “I never said this before – but thank you.” “That touches my soul, it really does,” she tells him with a grin. Roy, one of the “elders” who helped look after the boys, joins them. “He taught me that gaining respect didn’t mean getting into trouble,” Blades says. It led him towards the restoration and repair business – mending instead of destroying things and himself – and on to the life he has today. The Dame takes everything in and says almost nothing until she is outside. “What two extraordinary people.” Rare is the actor who makes nothing about herself that shouldn’t be.
She takes Blades to visit the home she shared with Williams and their daughter, Finty, and then to Williams’s grave nearby. She reads Blades the inscription – “‘You have bereft me of all words’. It means: ‘I don’t know what to say.’” They stand there in comfortable silence together. Good job the speedboat is coming up or we’d all get very bored, wouldn’t we? I wish directors would trust viewers more. Unavoidable commission it may have been but, nevertheless, there was such a lovely programme here, desperate to be set free.
• Dame Judi and Jay: The Odd Couple is on Channel 4 now.
