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THE CLONING OF JOANNA MAY

Network DVD / Released 19 January 2009

Featuring Brian Cox, Patricia Hodge, Siri Neal

The superb Fay Weldon has always been a woman of visionary ideas, often labeled as a writer of a feminist slant she has also quite often combined that with stories that definitely lead towards science fiction. Her best known work The Lives and Loves of a She Devil took the idea of the wronged wife to a whole new level and here in The Cloning of Joanna May (just released by Network) she expands on the subject and proves she has her finger on the pulse with two still very current topics, nuclear energy and cloning.

The team who brought She-Devil to the screen are also involved here, scriptwriter Ted Whitehead, director Philip Saville and star Patricia Hodge and the vibe, despite being made for ITV as opposed to She-Devil's BBC, is very similar. Hodge plays forty something Joanna May who has been living estranged from her wealthy nuclear energy power plant CEO husband Carl (the brilliant Brian Cox), even though both have taken younger lovers (a young James Purefoy for Joanna and the sexy Siri Neal for Carl) they are both still very much obsessed with what the other is doing.

Matters come to a head when Joanna discovers that Carl (using DNA taken from her during a supposed abortion back in the late 1960's) has been making serious inroads into actually cloning her and that he has created three other versions of her. Whilst Carl has plans to take one of them as his new wife Joanna has plans of her own to claim to take the clones as her own.

A fantastic piece of drama, one that is equal parts humanist drama about relationships and one that equally has as much to say about the dangers of new technologies and their scope for going wrong. The issue of the privatisation of so many public sectors, including nuclear energy was much a political hot potato at the time and now 16 or so years later that hasn't changed at all and prove just how on the mark Weldon was.

The Cloning of Joanna May is well worth spending some time with and could also be seen as a kind of companion piece to the 1980's classic Edge of Darkness.

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