What mid-life crisis?
A new chapter for the Cold Feet crew
Sitting at a round window table, in one of those glorious Mancunian Victorian pubs – all high ceilings, wood panelling and stained glass – Adam and Pete are laughing together in the way only old middle-aged friends can: mocking, affectionate, intimate. Adam is telling us what he most wants out of life: to play for Manchester United. Pete is confessing a dream “to be an international playboy. Oh, and get a loft extension… if Jen’ll let me.”
Adam, the lovable rogue, and his good-natured best mate Pete have long been one of Britain’s favourite bromances, thanks to their part in the comedy drama series Cold Feet, which returned to our screens last autumn after a 13-year hiatus.
Today, as filming for the seventh series nears the end, it’s pleasing to see Adam and Pete’s real-life alter egos – actors James Nesbitt, 52, and John Thomson, 48 – finish each other’s sentences and vie for attention off camera just like they do in character.
“We hadn’t seen each other for a few years,” says Nesbitt, “but after two weeks of filming last year, it felt like we’d hardly been away for six months.”
Watching them shoot a scene in which the characters – 50-year-old Hermione Norris (Karen), 60-year-old Robert Bathurst (David), 51-year-old Fay Ripley (Jen) and Adam’s new love interest Tina, played by Leanne Best, 37 – plan a joint 50th birthday party was disturbingly familiar, like looking over in your favourite pub to see a crowd of regulars who you recognise from quiz night.
Ahead of the new series, which begins tonight, what do long-time fans need to know about what’s in store for the Cold Feet characters, who they’ve grown up and older with?
Of Adam, Nesbitt says: “He’s always on some kind of quest. There’s a child in him. And despite his idiocy, recklessness and romanticism, I would like him to grow old gracefully… But I don’t think he will.”
Ripley says Jen should “lose a stone and have some Botox and fillers, and some leg-lengthening and a tummy tuck. I could do that for a part – for my job…” Perhaps she won’t need to, however – the new series brings a promotion, which sees her relationship with Pete put under more strain.
Thomson is keen to see Pete move into a sunnier space than he occupied last series, when he was hit with depression, saying: “He’s not a happy bunny. It took him to terrible places. And he doesn’t fly well solo” – Jen and he were apart for several series in the original run – “so it’s always a worry to him if he could cope again.”
Hence his enthusiasm for a new plotline that will take him to “St Tropez or Monaco… it’ll be a tonic for him,” says Thomson. “I mean, it’s not an impossibility for Pete to be a playboy. If the director and producer said to me, ‘We want you to get buff ’, I could do that.”
Thomson pats his soft rounded stomach gently and then adopts a hurt expression when Nesbitt, who looks fit enough to have a crack at a game at Old Trafford, hoots with laughter again.
Despite the feelings of similarity between the actors and their roles, Ripley admits: “Sometimes, I see the script and get taken by surprise at what Jenny is going to do.”
Does she ever look at Hermione Norris’s storylines for Karen and think: “Why can’t I have what she’s having?” Such as a torrid affair with Art Malik
(who plays Eddie Zubayr), for starters?
“Oh no,” she says. “You never want your best mate’s husband, in my opinion… That’s their stuff and you want yours.”
The only script she is not up for would be finding Jen wearing a bikini. “That would not be a nice surprise.”
The cast’s exuberance is old news to Cold Feet creator Mike Bullen, who is also in the pub, sipping coffee.
“The thing I love most is that everybody on the show is fully committed to it. It’s not just another gig. We all feel it is special; nobody is dialling it in and that makes me raise my game as a writer.”
So why do we still all love Cold Feet and the messy chaos of middle-class Manchester life? “We are sort of part of the furniture of this country,” he offers. “We are most successful when we make people laugh and cry. It’s a British thing – maybe it’s universal – laughing through the tears. Joy in adversity.”
And now, having come back from its 13-year break, can it run and run? “I only look one series ahead,” he says, adding: “My greatest joy has been that the new series has reached young people. I love that they are able to watch their parents’ generation as real people.
“It’s helping them to realise that even in your 50s you are still making a go of it.”
In fact, that echoes one of Adam’s first lines as series seven starts and we see him happily coupled up with his landlady, Tina.
“I think I’m getting the hang of this thing called life,” he proudly tells Pete, who promptly responds: “Knowing you, you’ll find some way to screw it up.” But then true Cold Feet fans would hope for nothing less.
Cold Feet is on tonight on ITV, 9pm