Thanks for the memories!

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

The first must-see film of the year.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

The setup--the family complications engendered after a veterinary nurse and a middle class garage owner embark on a May-December relationship-- could be painful, stupid, or funny. This is so over the top it is hysterical. Eve Myles (Torchwood) throttles back on her usual Welshness from Torchwood to do constantly confused girlfriend, Anthony Stewart Head (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Manchild) underplays the older lover. Lindsay Duncan chews the scenery as the ex-wife who lives next door and steals Head's shirts. Eps 1 & 2 alone feature a fracas over the 1971 Stones concert, a post-it note bikini, a bomb threat, the stalker ex-wife in the bushes with binoculars...and most particularly the badgers. What's not to love?!

Actors I like--Anthony Head and Jeff Rawle--but it's the show I don't. Head is a wealthy older man living with a younger lover, Lauren Grey, and they are being victimized by their respective families. Head's brother is an older lazy lump; Grey's mother a complete buttinsky, her sister is married to a jerk, their kids--well, the less said the better. Oh, and Head's crazy ex-wife rents the house next door so she can stalk him. And Lindsay Duncan, the ex, has been around forever of the BBC and looks it. Thank god they only made six episodes of this series. If you have any acquaintances you don't like, recommend this series to them and you will be assured they will never contact you again.

After seeing the trailers for this show on Gold I initially had high hopes. But after the first episode those hopes were well and truly dashed, but in fairness that is common, as the first episode of any new series is really just establishing characters and their relationships within the storyline. So I dismissed my scepticism as unjust in the hope that once it got into its stride that it would somehow perk up and improve. WRONG. This is possibly the most painfully dire, forced and unfunny British sitcom I have seen in literally decades. It's predictable like watching a fatal car crash in slow motion and about as humorous as aforementioned too. If you really find yourself with 40 minutes to kill on an evening I'd suggest a couple of pints of beer instead as that will leave a far less bitter after taste and a greater feeling of satisfaction.

OK, so this isn't the most radical of sitcoms. It's full of middle class clichés not to mention many situations and characters we've seen up teen times before. But I really like it. As long as you can suspend your disbelief long enough to believe that a man can be (pretty much) stalked by his ex wife yet tolerated, then the wit and one liners, not to mention the charm of many of the show's cast should win you over easily enough. The acting is (in the main) pretty broad. Lindsay Duncan is OTT but very funny as the ex wife, and Antony Head is probably the only cast member that seems to be underplaying as Ed. Everyone else just stays on the right side of outright mugging. But hey, leave your radicalism in another room and take this programme for what it is - an enjoyable, funny sitcom in the traditional style.