Alright, this is not classic comedy after Oscar Wilde or Noel Coward but I find it happily heart-warming and constantly tickles my fancy no matter how often I watch the episodes.One of my favourites of its kind.
The writing, by Eric Chappell and Jean Warr, is, I think, quite simply as good as it gets for light TV comedy and a lot better than much TV comedy can manage today; it could be a little risque but never smutty. The laughter of the studio audience was not forced, but genuine and it was frequent. I almost always felt like chuckling when they did.
As has been previously noted, the ensemble playing by the quartet of main characters, played by Keith Baron and Gwen Taylor, as the first British couple and Joanna Van Gyseghem and Neil Stacy as the second was just perfect, a masterclass of its kind. They enjoyed and inhabited their roles to perfection. Comedy acting can be just as demanding as high drama.
Keith Baron plays David Pearce, the perpetual would-be Don Juan who wonders why he hasn't got further in life and in love, and his loving and long-suffering wife Amy is played by Gwen Taylor, whom I readily confess I really fancied when she was in her prime in this series. I never understood what David saw in Joanna Van Gyseghem's Linda Cochran, whose character, was superficially attractive but ultimately brittle; but, it was, of course, the engine of the plot. Neil Stacy was perfect as the stolid and unromantic but thoroughly decent husband to Linda.
If WWII POW films have been held up as showing the British character so is a series like this, in showing the British on holiday, when temporarily all the normal rules of everyday life, and the individual history which is its long train, are suspended and some new departure seems possible, although ultimately there must come the realisation there isn't. This is just a holiday. You go home at the end of it.
The British have all too human frailties, but still remain thoroughly English even when mired in them, somehow engagingly so.
My favourite episodes were 'Neville', brilliantly played by Philip Fox, as a gloriously gawky go-between between David and Linda, 'Cause Celebre', in which David rediscovers his old trade unionist passion in supporting exploited Spanish waiters, which makes Amy remember why she fell in love with David in the first place and The Party, in which Amy does a spirited cover on Marlene Dietrich's classic role the Blue Angel which makes David realise why he originally fell in love with Amy.
I should be remiss if I forget the excellent comic characterisation of Carlos Douglas as the kindly but sometimes perplexed and over-worked Spanish waiter.
Sadly, Keith Baron is no longer with us and the others are now elderly but in this series they have set in aspic the perfect light-hearted British comedy romance, but one which is not without some deeper bass notes gently sounding from time to time below the froth. Bravo to all concerned!
The writing, by Eric Chappell and Jean Warr, is, I think, quite simply as good as it gets for light TV comedy and a lot better than much TV comedy can manage today; it could be a little risque but never smutty. The laughter of the studio audience was not forced, but genuine and it was frequent. I almost always felt like chuckling when they did.
As has been previously noted, the ensemble playing by the quartet of main characters, played by Keith Baron and Gwen Taylor, as the first British couple and Joanna Van Gyseghem and Neil Stacy as the second was just perfect, a masterclass of its kind. They enjoyed and inhabited their roles to perfection. Comedy acting can be just as demanding as high drama.
Keith Baron plays David Pearce, the perpetual would-be Don Juan who wonders why he hasn't got further in life and in love, and his loving and long-suffering wife Amy is played by Gwen Taylor, whom I readily confess I really fancied when she was in her prime in this series. I never understood what David saw in Joanna Van Gyseghem's Linda Cochran, whose character, was superficially attractive but ultimately brittle; but, it was, of course, the engine of the plot. Neil Stacy was perfect as the stolid and unromantic but thoroughly decent husband to Linda.
If WWII POW films have been held up as showing the British character so is a series like this, in showing the British on holiday, when temporarily all the normal rules of everyday life, and the individual history which is its long train, are suspended and some new departure seems possible, although ultimately there must come the realisation there isn't. This is just a holiday. You go home at the end of it.
The British have all too human frailties, but still remain thoroughly English even when mired in them, somehow engagingly so.
My favourite episodes were 'Neville', brilliantly played by Philip Fox, as a gloriously gawky go-between between David and Linda, 'Cause Celebre', in which David rediscovers his old trade unionist passion in supporting exploited Spanish waiters, which makes Amy remember why she fell in love with David in the first place and The Party, in which Amy does a spirited cover on Marlene Dietrich's classic role the Blue Angel which makes David realise why he originally fell in love with Amy.
I should be remiss if I forget the excellent comic characterisation of Carlos Douglas as the kindly but sometimes perplexed and over-worked Spanish waiter.
Sadly, Keith Baron is no longer with us and the others are now elderly but in this series they have set in aspic the perfect light-hearted British comedy romance, but one which is not without some deeper bass notes gently sounding from time to time below the froth. Bravo to all concerned!