Put away the champagne — Cold Feet has already lost its sparkle
After the full-force spectacular return of Cold Feet (ItV) last week, a soapy tsunami of weddings, hauntings and super-rich girlfriends, the big question was whether the series could sustain this excitement.
With the pent-up energy of 13 years away from our screens, it blew its cork with a champagne explosion of froth and bubbles. But the fizz already shows disappointing signs of turning out to be flat and vinegary.
As Adam (James Nesbitt) fled to hide in the bathroom moments after taking his wedding vows, the sparkle began to ebb.
every tV drama has to have at least one scene a week set in a public loo — it’s probably an eU regulation — but Adam seemed to step out of the church and into a five-star hotel.
this ecclesiastical men’s room had marble tiles and expensive, muted underlighting. It couldn’t have been posher if one of the 12 disciples had been standing by the door, handing out warm towels and aftershave.
Cold feet always took a dotty pleasure in its surreal segues, the scenes with a hint of the dream sequence. But it’s hard to understand why Adam was cowering in a cubicle, desperate to back out of his marriage after just five minutes — or why his chums Karen and Jenny (Hermione Norris and fay ripley) were standing by the soap dispensers, urging him to break it off.
We’re supposed to accept that Adam must reject the love of his life out of duty to his teenage son, Matthew. But he’s been happy enough to gallivant around the far east for the past decade, leaving the boy at boarding school.
Why the stabs of conscience now, when he’s landed a girl whose dad owns half of Singapore?
And on that matter, about eddie the billionaire: I’m starting to suspect Art Malik’s character is a scam artist in a borrowed kurta tunic. What evidence do we have that he’s super-rich, apart from the fact he uses two mobile phones?
He’s about to entrust his tax affairs to David (robert Bathurst), a middle management financial adviser, because he fancies Karen, David’s ex. And when he swoops for a first date, eddie talks about whisking her to Paris on his private jet, but then brings her a takeaway balti. Would you be impressed?
I’m also struggling to work out why John thomson’s miserable minicab driver Pete is moonlighting as a home careworker. He takes time off from his taxi work to drop in on James Bolam and give him foot massages at £7 an hour.
the bloke is hard-up, that’s obvious, but Pete must be paying for the car lease and the cabby’s licence — why not use them? Perhaps I’m being too po-faced about it all. Champagne isn’t a serious drink: we’re meant to float away on the bubbles and ignore the lingering aftertaste.
the Beeb has been clinking glasses for weeks, to celebrate its long history of classic comedies.
But it was taking the fun much too seriously on British Sitcom: 60 Years Of Laughing At Ourselves (BBC4). rebecca front’s voiceover was a smug recital of political correctness, as she looked back at everything from Hancock’s Half Hour to Gavin And Stacey from a superior height. the clips were fine, though brief. the commentary was awful.
till Death Us Do Part was summed up as a clash of wills between ‘Conservative Alf Garnett and socially liberal, progressive daughter rita’. that’s a Leftie interpretation so humourless it sounds like it’s been copied from a Soviet textbook.
And rebecca was primly disapproving of Spike Milligan’s dodgy Curry And Chips, without ever hinting at his other brilliant comedies. Well, the BBC never did appreciate Spike.
the guests were no better. James Corden, former sitcom writer and now a U.S. chat show host, stuck his oar in — has there been one documentary this year that hasn’t featured him as a talking head?
A gaunt Steve Coogan was also pontificating about the meaning of sitcom. He declared it ‘a shared experience with people you can’t see’. that’s a piece of pretension worthy of Alan Partridge — but, apparently, Coogan meant it.