After today’s visit to the climbing wall in Leeds I am convinced that there is a potential space in the market for a new TV series. It would be positioned somewhere between Last of the Summer Wine and Cliffhanger. but perhaps with some elements of that wonderful film Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. There would have to be a climbing element, of course, but the plot would revolve around a cast of characters, all of whom are (to put it kindly) in late middle age, but all of whom have a past full of respectable climbing achievements. Each of them uses the weekly experience of climbing at the wall as a framework through which to live out continuing hopes and ambitions, or to define themselves still in terms of the person they once were. Climbing creates a small community within which it is still possible to affirm one’s value, cherish ambitions, and above all to assert identity.
Like Last of the Summer Wine the series would revel in its distinctive regional character, and the way in which experience teeters permanently on the edge between the realisation of imagined goals and farce. There would need to be a humorous (although on this occasion intentional) exploration of the boundaries between real athletic ability and absurd fantasy. It would borrow from Best Exotic Marigold Hotel the attraction of being allowed to glimpse the inner world of a culture now defined only by the recollection of a distinguished past. The climbing wall would be sufficiently exotic a location to add interest …. perhaps not as exotic as an Indian city, but surely better than the location of Dinner Ladies.
The more I think about this the more it grows on me. Any offers?