Category: TV

This Life + 10

This Life came back to our screens last night, 10 years on.

It was OK, but not quite as good as I was hoping.

The great thing about the first series was its freshness. The series showed people as they were. Rather than as they were imagined by screenwriters, novelists and ad-men.

This Life was new and compelling because it avoided the tired clichés of twenty-something drama. This Life wasn’t Friends.

The exploits of Miles, Milly, Egg, Warren and Anna were compulsive viewing in the 90s. The realistic storylines, much copied camcorder style, sex, swearing and drugs were refreshing.

I loved it then and tuned in with anticipation to see how the central characters had fared 10 years on.

Egg, now a famous novelist, has written a book loosely based on his old housemates and they all came together at Miles’ mansion for a weekend reunion. The twist is the reunion is filmed as part of a fly-on-the-wall style film to accompany Egg’s new novel.

Egg married Milly and they have a young son. Milly is now a full time mum. Their circumstances, and Egg’s success, is causing inevitable tension. They represent the young married couple. A few years in and still coming to terms with the arrival of their first child. The awesome realisation that marriage is for life is still playing out between them.

Anna, headstrong and chain-smoking as ever, is unmarried and looking for a man. On the surface, she rejects the cosy certainties of wedlock and is almost scornful of Egg and Milly’s married life. However, below the surface, she wants a relationship and children.

I was disappointed by the depiction of Warren. He was surrounded by stereotypically negative gay themes like death, drugs, dependency, suicide and weakness.

The episode opens with a funeral. Ferdy’s funeral. Although how Ferdy died is unclear, by not explaining his death, the audience is left to infer AIDS.

Warren comes across as a pill popping, herbal remedy dependent, indecisive weakling. At one point he awkwardly asks Miles for money and is flatly rejected. This compounds his character’s sense of dependency, insecurity and failure.

Set against Ferdy’s recent death, Warren comes across as a tragic figure. At one point, Warren is seen gorging on his new age pills and old friends find him comatose, believing he has committed suicide. The scriptwriters could have done so much with a gay lawyer. But, sadly, they reached for stereotype, cliché and caricature.

Miles is rich, having made a fortune from a successful business career. He lives in a huge country house with a beautiful wife. However, all is not what it seems when the bailiffs suddenly arrive to repossess his furniture. His wealth is illusion. His success a sham. Debt defines Miles. Not wealth.

The episode ended with Anna proposing to Warren to father her child and Miles walking off into the unknown to travel and find himself.

The main themes seem to be uncertainty and doubt.

Is married life for Egg ?

Will Milly go back to her legal career ?

Will/can Anna settle down ?

WIll Warren sort himself out ?

Will Miles ever stop being a bastard ?

The Prisoner

BBC Four are showing Patrick McGoohan’s 1960s cult classic, The Prisoner.

I love this show. It’s just brilliant.

Truly original and thought-provoking.

McGoohan plays ‘Number 6’ a secret agent who mysteriously resigns and is kidnapped.

He wakes up a prisoner in a weird psychedelic community called ‘The Village’.

Everyone is referred to as a number and there is no escape.

The Village is run by a series of administrators, known as ‘Number 2’.

Each tries to break down ‘Number 6’ to get at his secrets.

All are met by McGoohan’s defiant character who replies, “I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, de-briefed or numbered! I am not a number, I am a free man”.

30 years after it was made debates still go on about what it’s about.

McGoohan himself doesn’t seem to know.

It’s basic theme is individual freedom and the right to free thought.

Be seeing you…..