Age Before Beauty review – a personal pamper party of escapism

From the moment cartoonish sort-of villain Leanne introduces herself as “filler queen, Botox bitch”, you get a feeling that the tone of Age Before Beauty will lean more towards Footballers’ Wives than The Split. Its first few moments are fun and frothy, from the glitzy sparkles that adorn its opening credits to Leanne’s way with a put-down. “My god, she looks her age,” is one of her many cuttingly concise assessments. It is about time someone revived Tanya Turner for the modern age, and Kelly Harrison looks to be having a ball in doing so.

This new six-part drama centres on a hair and beauty salon in Manchester called MirrorBel. It begins as a relatively familiar homecoming story, as oldest sister Bel (Polly Walker) returns to the family business she left behind years ago. Her kids have gone to university and she finds herself at a loss as to what to do with her time. Handily, MirrorBel, now run by Leanne and staffed by her two other sisters and mother Ivy-Rae (Sue Johnston, playing a more tempered version of Julie Walters’ gruesome mother in Dinnerladies), is in the doldrums. The business needs a makeover and an organised manager, to give it some va-va-voom and a new lease of life.

Suddenly, Bel feels as if she has a purpose again. She remembers what she loved about the salon and gets stuck into transforming its fortunes. So far, so you-go-girl. And then she receives a text that reveals her loving husband, Wes, has been playing away from home. At this point, it swerves away from zingy camp, pushing the action towards family drama, although it steers away from that, too, into mild thriller territory, with a twist at the end of the hour establishing yet another direction completely.

There’s a lot going on, and not only in terms of genre. Bel’s sisters are fairytale characters. Leanne has a sharp tongue and a desperate case of insecurity when it comes to measuring herself against Bel. Tina is laconic, does tattoos and wears black. Single mum Heidi is so desperate for her young daughter Disney’s affection that she trots her off to kids’ beauty pageants and refers to the two of them as BFFs far more than should be legal. Their lives are relatively straightforward when compared with those of their parents, though; Ivy-Rae spends much of the opener ditching her husband (she runs off with Hector, a bullfighter she met at the gym, and Johnston’s delivery of: “He liked me clean and jerk” is worth savouring). It’s joyfully over-the-top, but there’s a sense that it needs to give everyone a bit more room, just to slow it down, and let them, and us, breathe.

As a show concerned with the industry of self-improvement, Age Before Beauty has plenty to chew on. Writer Debbie Horsfield last depicted a salon on TV when she created Cutting It in 2001, and she is aware that times have changed beyond recognition. (Another great Leanne line: “You could at least respect my legacy and get yourself polished, filled and Botox-ed into something presentable.”) Horsfield recently explained that Age Before Beauty would ask questions about our fixation with appearance and presentation, and promised to show its characters with blemishes and all, to balance out the “unrealistically perfect bodies” beamed into our living rooms by reality TV.

That requires a delicate balancing act. In criticising the pursuit of perfection, in poking fun at the Botox and the waxing and the fillers, there is a risk of coming across as judgmental, but it is to Horsfield’s credit that it never quite feels that way. More, Age Before Beauty asks why most people are incapable of feeling happy with themselves, and it is not only the women of the show who are insecure. Indirectly, Wes lets his shock at realising he has a dad bod lead him into an affair with a younger woman, whose interest flatters him into idiocy. Ageing makes Wes more attractive. Bel is forced to ask herself: “Where did you go?”

Those expecting a sharper, more satirical edge might be disappointed. Any mockery is relatively benign and gentle, and the weight of predictable marital drama soon overshadows the more fun aspects. But this is solid writing, with a solid cast of decent, watchable actors. As escapism goes, it’s at least on a par with the kind of “personal pamper party” you might find at MirrorBel.