Daily Mail - Daily Mail Weekend Magazine
BEST FEET FORWARD!
The Cold Feet gang are back after 13 years – and just as with real old friends, you’ll be astonished how quickly you get absorbed into their lives again
The nation’s love affair with Cold Feet began in 1997 when we were first introduced to thirty-something friends Adam and Rachel, Pete and Jenny, and Karen and David. Five series later they’d become an indelible part of TV history.
Now, 13 years after what many feared was the final series of the award-winning hit, they’re back this week, minus Rachel – tragically killed in a crash. And it really is like catching up with a group of old friends. So, what’s been happening? Quite a lot, although the storylines are being jealously guarded by ITV.
Suffice to say, though, that the widowed Adam (James Nesbitt) is back in Manchester from Singapore to see his and Rachel’s now teenage son, Matthew (Ceallach Spellman), and catch up with the old gang. Karen (Hermione Norris) has been looking out for Matthew, who’s at boarding school, but she’s his godmother and what he needs is parental love.
Adam’s still football mad but his efforts to bond with Matthew by watching a match together fail when the teenager confesses he finds the game boring.
Pete (John Thomson) and Jenny (Fay Ripley) have patched up their fractured marriage but, with two children, their finances are tight. Meanwhile, the second marriage of self- deluding David ( Robert Bathurst) is wobbling. And none of them is getting any younger.
The show’s creator Mike Bullen, who has written the eight new episodes, says, ‘This feels like the right time to revisit these characters. They’re 50 but still feel 30, apart from on the morning after the night before, when they really feel their age.’
Says James Nesbitt, ‘I never thought we’d do it again. Then I opened the first new script and thought, “My God, there they are.” Those characters leapt off the page with something still to say.
‘What was always strong about Cold Feet was its humour, pathos and honesty. Those are the ingredients that make the show what it is – and they’re still there.’
For John Thomson it’s the ordinariness of everyday life that makes the show. ‘There is, of course, light and shade in Cold Feet,’ he says, ‘but more shade for Pete this time as a result of his fluctuating fortunes. There were days when I’d go home and be just washed out because of the emotions I’d had to put across.’
Hermione Norris had, well, cold feet when the offer came to reprise the series. ‘It had been so loved that I felt it might be best to leave well alone. The weight of expectation and the risk of bringing it back but not quite as good gave me a moment’s pause. But then writer Mike
Bullen said it would be viewing them at the beginning of their 50s, a very different chapter in anyone’s life.’
Fay Ripley perhaps summed it up best. ‘It was like putting on an old jumper. As soon as I read the first new scripts I immediately recognised all the characters. And, once we were all together, it felt like five minutes ago.’
Rober t Bathurst is caut ious, though. ‘I hope it isn’t trumpeted as the return of the hit series because we’ve got to earn that again. We mustn’t ever say, “Oh, it worked before. It’ll work again.” People have to make up their own minds.’
Even so, would the cast come back if another new series was commissioned? James Nesbitt speaks for them all. ‘Oh yes,’ he confirms, ‘In a heartbeat.’ Cold Feet, Monday, 9pm, ITV.