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Rearing his head proved a bit of problem in episode one. I was going to start a thread on this, actually, and call it "Giles' Flaccid ManCock"...
It was a guilty pleasure. Quite slick, funny... I did watch it mainly for the spectacle of Anthony Head being a naughty man.
Personally, I don't think it's anywhere near as cringingly bad as Sex and The City, but I'm not sure it has anything unique about it that will enable it to find an audience - Sex and The City has been extremely popular (as far as I can tell from friends, especially amongst women, and particularly women whose taste in entertainment is usually much higher) because it's the only show on television that shows women smoking, drinking, swearing, shagging, and talking about shagging like adults, without having bad things happen to them in some kind of awful morality tale. (Although I still find SatC pretty sickeningly reactionary: "I found myself wondering, can a rich woman ever have a good relationship with a poor man? No.")
I don't know if wealthy men in their fifties want or indeed need an equivalent. Manchild (or at least Nigel Havers' narrating figure) makes a point of stressing that the wealthy, single, hedonistic man in his fifties who has sex with lots of beautiful young women is an entirely modern phenomenon, whereas it seems to me to be a cliche that's at least as old as popular entertainment...
What saves it is probably the way that Havers' character is constantly being undermined - the sense that he really is a bit sad, a bit tragic. The scene with his posh druggy son, Justin, was quite good in that regard. I'd like to see it go more in that direction... At the moment it's... Well, it's there, and I'll probably watch it if I'm in, but it's nothing special. (TVPATROLGO!)
[ 20-02-2002: Message edited by: Flyboy ] |
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