This Life +10 C/D?

i had to watch the whole thing, even if it'd been awful - but i thought they actually made a decent fist of it. shite cop-out ending but still entirely believable in terms of what the characters would probably be doing now, and i'd completely forgotten what it was like to watch a tv show where people actually talk how people actually talk.

and then i watched the thick of it straight afterwards and remembered. and now, shaun of the dead. a great night's telly, surely!

heh. i was totally expecting kira and joe to turn up in the very final scene (possibly) with a small baby in situ, and kira saying "wotcha - what've we missed then?" or something

this is funnier, and a far better concept, than anything in that entire misfire of a drama.

i mean ... what actually HAPPENED in the intervening decade? miles made money, egg wrote a book, milly quit her job ... but nobody, nobody at all, changed? not even in the slightest? they all remained, at heart, the same fuck-ups they were in their mid/late twenties? ALL of them? talk about a cop-out; here was a chance to really have some fun with the characters, really develop them, and they just fell straight back in to the same old ruts. for the love of god, tell me nobody actually identified with these ... i dunno, ciphers.

and i mean ... what actually HAPPENED in the course of that entire 80 minutes? other than a series of poorly implemented set-pieces (the baby-alarm argument being fist-in-mouth, eye-popping contrivance of the cheesiest kind) and a whole lot of desperate clutching at false climaxes, so much so that by about halfway through i was desperate for it to end.

(and mrs fiendish has just reminded me about the iraq/4x4 argument, which looked like it had fallen in from another script entirely.)

i did watch it all, mind. just like i'll watch that sodding "green wing" special too. at least that might have the odd joke in it :)

drivel. spunk. a travesty. what a shame.

yeah, i already forgot that part ( the brain is dumping this type of bad shit sooo quickly these days) that was indeed dreadful, really dreadful.

(Thick of It on again RIGHT NOW just starting on BBC4, Grimly)

i didn't even understand the miles/anna bit at the end.

for an example of how it can be done, see 'before sunset'.

The whole idea of going to a ludicrous country house and 'fly on the wall' documentary was poor to begin with. What might have been more interesting would be to mix up the reunion with excepts of their separate lifes, so you'd get to see the difference between how they present themselves in a group and what really happened to them.

Worst moment: some many to choose from, but the bailiffs arriving was so cringeworthy. The ending was pathetic.

Ferdi did well to miss it. And what happened to Milly's looks?

NB. I don't actually hit women. Or men.

Anyway - some of the individual performances were good. Warren was great as his new-age control freak facade cracked. Anna was great, but exactly in the same way that she was great originally - you might have hoped for a more complexity there. The 'I want a baby' thing didn't really cut it. Maybe that's what a career cloistered in the law does for you. Milly and Egg, I think, ARE believeable as a couple, but not all that interesting. (By the way, whoever said that Amita has lost her looks is nuts, she's still hot. Anna's hair was disappointing though).

Grimly said **all remained, at heart, the same fuck-ups they were in their mid/late twenties?**

I don't know many people who aren't. I mean we may accumulate money, have kids, travel, have 'careers', but we're still the same. Anyway, bringing them back together was always going to make them revert to type anyway. They all have their roles within the group, and the natural thing is for them to fall into this roles. Warren was interesting in that he seemed to be trying to establish himself as a 'new' Warren, but couldn't hack it.

-- Alba

OTM*. Perfect Day meant that This Life +10 was unnecessary.

*Perfect Day: The Millennium was maybe closer - group of 30 something former Uni pals reunite in remote rural house for a few days and old tensions and passions are resurrected yada yada.

I forgot Miles - I like JD, he can act for sure. I thought the Anna-Miles moment were well acted, but v. badly scripted.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v210/jel2004/thislifeplusten.jpg

I laughed a lot at "I want sperm without strings!"

don't understand this formulation. you have a right to expect that, for example, the bbc won't greenlight a script as bad as this script was. that's not an 'absurdly inflated expectation'!

Not true. It was a poor script.

BBC do loads of bad scripts all the time.

(Also -- and you'll have to trust me on this -- having worked as a repertory theatre reviewer for the past half-decade, the script really wasn't that bad. I've seen a lot fucking worse.)

such as? NyLon? C'mon now!

I'm not even sure my actual life is better than This Life was - not that I was imitating it, but...y'know.

House Of Elliot +100 please! Um, hold on, that might not work in exactly the way I meant it.

Did Matt DC say why he thought TL was 'better than expected'? I think we must be told.

i also laffed at the "protection" bit...

yes! and when anna was playing drugstore just before it, but on an I-POD ooh didn't 'ave them back in teh day eh?

Why was Egg's name spelt Edgar Cooke on the book when it's been Edgar Cook elsewhere (including on the documentary afterwards). Also how can someone so ridiculously inarticulate and unable to comprehend any emotions past "I love you Milly, nearly as much as I love Man Utd" possibly have written such a successful and critically-acclaimed* novel?

* presume that shitey books don't often get launched at the British Library by Mark Lawson

Egg = Amy Jenkins (in her dreams), yes?

x-post

Yes, but your flatmate's dad?

no, what we all wanted was a decent programme!

Didn't he say his hotel chain was called "Hobotel"? Who the fuck would want to stay in something called "Hobotel"?! (actually, I'm guessing no-one, hence appearance of rubbish night-time bailiffs with an eye for antique chairs)

* Rich Dad, plus rich ex-wife (the latter either big ol' divorce settlement or big ol' life insurance policy, depending on what happened to Francesca).

1) Egg is happiest when cooking, but still has no idea how to deal with his girlfriend (and now son)
2) Warren has "issues"
3) Anna is "complex"
4) Milly is neurotic
5) Miles is a twat

Give them all (Anna excepted) implausible careers, add an "edgy" (except it wasn't) "zeitgest-friendly" (except it wasn't) plot device (which didn't really work anyway since so much took place away from the reality TV lassie) and, hurrah, you have a cobbled-together-in-minutes TV show and Amy Jenkins is a bit more rich.

(I liked some of the nods to the old series, and some of the one-liners were nice, and the cast all fell back into character very quickly. But it was exceptionally unsatisfying)

xpost

i also liked camera girl's accent. and the one scene where she started recording warren taking overdose and which relied on you knowing the significance of an out of focus red led.

how long has cocaine come in little glass bottles? i'm out of touch with my druglord friends obv.