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The last episode of this was just on telly tonight. I'm guessing that a lot of people missed the first series, what with BBC2's innovative scheduling techniques and the whole The Office thing (another casualty of which, although not to anything like the same extent as M&G, was the excellent Phoenix Nights).
The premise, for those who missed it: Keith Barratt is a taxi dravi who's stuck in an unhappy marriage with Marion. Everyone knows that it's not working apart from Keith, who goes through his life completely oblivious to the fact that his wife only feels contempt for him and is having an affair with her boss, Geoff. In Keith's eyes, everything is going fine. His kids are happy, Marion loves him and Geoff is an exceptional boss and a good friend.
Series 2 gives us Keith post-separation. After an 'unfortunate incident' (effectively the result of his complete emotional collapse after Marion left him), he only gets to see his kids on rare occasions at a motorway service station, accompanied by a social worker (there's a wonderful bit where he forgets to give them the water pistols he'd brought as presents and chases Geoff's car up the motorway in an attempt to rectify his mistake, beeping the horn and waving his hands as paintings that his kids made for him years ago - and Marion has only just deigned to give him - fly out of his open window).
This is comedy that's - thankfully - a million miles away from The Office. There's little discomfort when watching it - instead, you feel real pity for Keith as he's a thoroughly decent guy. Dull, but decent. The episodes are filmed as talking heads monologues, Keith always speaking directly to camera whilst sat in the driver's seat of his car (the only point of view that the audience is presented with, with Keith being the only character we ever see). We never get to see any of the action, either - events are related to us after they've happened. It's unashamedly gentle stuff which shows us a relentlessly optimistic man carrying on regardless as his world collapses around him, yet it never becomes trite, maudlin or overly depressing. It's also the finest piece of character acting seen on TV for ages.
Rob Brydon, one half of the writing team and the guy who plays Keith, stated recently that he's a fan of David Nobbs' The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin, probably the most underated gem of UK comedy ever. You can see (and feel) the influence.
Anyone else watch this? Opinions on the way it was wrapped up tonight (I'm going to avoid spoilers just in case, but I thought the way they played with the audience's expectations - we know Keith well enough to know that he's going to make the wrong choice, and that annoys us and lets us feel cheated until the very last scene plays out behind the credits - was astonishingly well done)?
I'm mighty peeved that The Office, an inferior series, got all the plaudits that should have gone to Blick and Brydon for this and also probably contributed to it getting far smaller viewing figures that it deserved. |
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