CheesyPeas
Tuesday 7th August 2007 3:25am [Edited]
Sunny Essex
2 posts
Okay, this isn't an original opinion... But I sadly have to agree.
The first series was just plain bad. Sheridan Smith was as good as can be in a vacuum, but then she's good at being Bizarro Nickson, which is why she picked her as her defacto avatar. The other characters were a bit terrible. And worse, the people playing them weren't all that - particularly not the execrable O.T. Fagbenle, whose perfomance had a lot in common with desks, cricket bats, and large stretches of the Amazon.
I'm not ashamed to admit I loved the hell out of Two Pints. It was fantastic for what it was: A comedy set in an entirely realistic setting, extrapolated into the surreal and driven by strong - if charicatured - characters and good relationships. You cared about the characters, because the story, no matter how ridiculous it got, had a grounding in people you've known, or met, or heard about. The crude humour was dealt with in the same manner. It held together great, it had some genuinely touching moments, it was often laugh-out-loud funny, and it didn't take itself seriously at all.
And best of all it had an honest nature. It was about as direct and uncomplicated as Gaz, and firmly planted in its chosen setting - one very dear to Nickson's heart, and it showed. It wasn't Black Books or Green Wing, but it was entertainment.
The ball has been well and truly dropped with Grownups now, hasn't it? I wanted to love series two. I wanted to forgive series one. I just couldn't.
It seems Ms. Nickson - or whoever is responsible for this nowadays - has waned since becoming an overnight talent with Two Pints, has been pulled away from the very life she parodied so well and has sadly lost touch with characters, situations - indeed anything relateable to. The first Really Bad Sign would be the wholesale ditching of two main characters from the first series. That doesn't bode well, does it? Admittedly they were terrible, but then they weren't given a lot to work with in the first place.
The only character with any flesh (literally) seems to be Sheridan - where Susan seems to continue to make the effort of dressing up her Nicksonoid and dropping her into increasingly far fetched and plastic scenarios in the hope of capturing the spark and reconnecting with the audience. It's becoming more and more obvious that she shot her bolt with sunny Runcorn, and what she's writing now isn't nearly as substantial, nor infused with any life experience or empathy. There's some lip service to 'modern living', but none of the nuance. It's like your drunk mate telling you a joke, but mixing up the words in the punchline.
And now ... Oh my. In an effort to recapture some of the elements that made Pints a good laugh, she's created three new characters. Well, I say three created. Who else spotted the Louise-ekin (even the actress herself must've been watching Drysdale for inspiration) and the Gazulcrum (The shirt-off in-joke was harmless fun in Pints, but we're all over it, now). So really she's created one character. A bookish, introspective aloof student type. With poet's hair, who's terribly sensitive yet... Oh for pity's sake.
Pints was great for the setting. Pints was great for the characters, their relationships; and even better, the relationships between the actual actors and actresses. It fitted together neatly, comfortably, and it shone for that. The flights of fancy and wild extrapolations were genuinely fun, because you cared about the characters - even in a small way - and wanted to see how they'd deal with it. And deal they did - often in entirely believable (or humourously unbelieveable) ways.
Grownups is none of those things. The setting is banal, poorly realised and possessed of little imagination. The characters are very narrow, very predictable and you just can't bring yourself to give a toss about them. Even Sue's Avatar isn't really all that entertaining - she's got nothing and nobody to bounce off of. And since it's hard to either care about the setting, or care about the characters, the actual situations - which are often too divorced from reality in that they're not properly grounded in the first damn place - are a short diversion to break the monotony of Sheridan's top and Steve's hair. Oh, and her slutty mate. Ha ha, laugh at the slutty mate.
Now how sad am I - I saw the first two episodes of season 2 tonight and registered just to bitch about it. My God, I'm turning into 'Concerned from Tewkesbury'.
Just tuppence.
