So tonight sees the return of This Life with This Life +10. Many people around and about my age are desperately looking forward to this. Today’s Guardian has an article explaining why, for a certain generation, tonight is event television.
And yes, I’ll be joining them. But once again, I’ll really hate myself for it. It’s a bit like buying the Mail on Sunday for the free DVD. You’ll really hate yourself in the morning for giving in to them for some average Michael Caine film.
When This Life was first shown, everybody seemed to watch it. Except that’s not actually true. Not that reading the papers (well The Guardian and The Independent as I did) you’d notice. I remember at the time getting awfully upset about the amount of coverage a mediaocre BBC2 soap was getting. It may have been popular in the metropolis, but the audience figures weren’t stellar, and certainly never troubled the ratings charts. Well OK, it did well on BBC2, and the same’s true today with Catherine Tate or Extras getting the coverage, while Green Green Grass or My Family are actually the country’s most popular comedies. Actually, I suspect it’s The Vicar of Dibley. ‘Nuff said.
This Life was a programme very much of its time, and looking at it then, as now, I don’t think it relfected enormously well on anybody.
You see, I absolutely hated every single character on the programme. There wasn’t a single person that I had any sympathy for whatsoever. Egg had, well, a bloody stupid name for a start. And then he just mucked around writing a book or whatever with little obvious means of support. Milly was just obnoxious. Miles was a prat. Anna was the kind of person you’d actually cross the M25 on foot to avoid. Warren disappeared for reasons that weren’t obvious, although he did get the best line at the end of the second series.
I hated all those scenes with the faceless psychiatrist. And more than anything, they were just a bunch of whinging winers who had a great life but cared only about themselves and nothing else.
So why did I watch? Well, why does a heroin addict continue shooting up? It’s a soap, and all soaps are addictive. That’s why soap writers are so good. Still, I did smile when Amy Jenkins’ books only did moderately well. Wikipedia has it that her first was a great success, but “second biggest debut” is probably a tad misleading, and her second novel certainly didn’t do as well. Indeed, she hasn’t really gone on to anything great since.
The actors have done OK, with Jack Davenport popping up all over the place, most pervasively in the dreadful Pirates of the Caribbean films. Daniela Nardini always seems to be in those two-part crime dramas on ITV – at least when Martin Clunes or Caroline Quentin are unavailable. Still, I look forward to her Servalan in the curious Blakes 7 “podcasts“. Andrew Lincoln is regularly found on television, although I couldn’t stand more than about the first fifteen minutes of the first episode of Teachers, and Afterlife leaves me cold despite really rating Lesley Sharp.
I have to rely on IMDB for the others. Amita Dhiri seems to have played two different characters on Holby City amongst other things. I thought I’d not seen Jason Hughes on TV again until IMDB informed me that he plays a regular on Midsomer Murders. That explains why I’d not seen him. Luisa Bradshaw-White (Kira) seems to have had regular roles on Bad Girls and Holby, again passing me by. Ramon Tikaram (Ferdy) was most recently in that series on Five that nobody watched – Tripping Over. He seemingly also had a role in Ruby in the Smoke over Christmas, but I don’t remember him in that.
Finally, there’s Natasha Little, who was probably one of the reasons I did stay with This Life as long as I did. She’s usually to be found in costume dramas these days (or playing herself in a costume drama in Extras), although she also had a run in Spooks.
So not a bad haul, but you could probably say the same of any soap filled with young people. I should probably exclude the cast of Hollyoaks from this generalisation, as I’d really hope that casting directors are steering as far clear of it as I am.
But it’s not the be all and end all. Yes, I’ll be watching this evening, but I’ll be flicking over the BBC Four pretty soon afterwards to watch The Thick of It. Hugh Abbot’s “gone to Australia” so we get the opposition in this one. Can’t wait.