Does anyone ever post their treatments on here? Well, here's mine anyway for what it's worth:
DIGS, by Stuart Richards
This is Digs; a pre-watershed situation comedy set in a modern day student halls of residence, where Phil & Fern are your new mum and dad and apathy and indifference are the new social revolt.
Welcome to Kevin Sutcliffe’s world, where students are urged to ‘be the change they want to see’; they are the country’s intellectual lifeblood, its future law-makers, teachers and doctors. Well, that’s the idea isn’t it?
Trouble is, Kev’s not entirely sure why he’s at university at all; thrown into the social melting pot (well, from lower to upper middle class) that is the Mahatma Gandhi Halls of Residence and left to fend for himself for the very first time, he’d be utterly lost in this academic wilderness....if he could be arsed.
Kev doesn’t really regard himself as an intellectual, you see. He’ll tell you he could be - if he wanted to be – but it’s not really his style (he’s clever enough, it’s just that books are for southerners). Oh yes, and he is northern, lest anyone forget; he enjoys his football, a nice pint, and the company of regular, down-to-earth folk like himself who know how to enjoy themselves. Surely not too scarce a commodity at the supposed, nay promised, den of iniquity that is higher education?
Meet Kev’s new friends: first up there’s Gabrielle, the sizzlingly attractive French nymphomaniac whose incessant gripes about all things English are sure to grate on any proud Englishman; then lovable rogue Dave, the patriotic, football-mad cockney with a less than laudable attitude towards members of the opposite sex (and their uses); feminist and peace-crusader Tash, with a shrew-like temper defiant of her diminutive frame, who loves nothing more than to make her views heard (but secretly yearns to be tamed by a tall, dark, intellectual figure wrought with mystery, sensitivity and culture); and finally, Ryan, the tall, dark, intellectual figure wrought with mystery, sensitivity and culture - with his array of rubbish southern trousers, rubbish southern cardigans and a really, really rubbish, southern hairdo (not to mention a love of all things grunge) it is safe to say that Ryan isn’t Kev’s closest ally in the group.
Oh and then there’s Puj; thank Brum for Puj. Puj just…well…gets Kev. She is everything he had hoped to find in a friend at uni; smart but lazy, easy-going, and (nearly) on his comedic level (and she even likes the Lighthouse Family). Good job he hasn’t yet noticed she’s kind of cute-looking - but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
DIGS’ principle ‘action’ takes place in the communal living space, occasionally straying to Kev’s room, the reception area (prudently guarded by hysterical, Nigerian receptionist Colin) and on to the Student Union bar (kept by ‘liberal’ barmaid Lucy and propped up by incongruous sexagenarian Mr Fish). The show combines the warmth and assortment of characters and relationships of a 'Friends' with that most subtly British of realities, the beauty of the mundane, encountered previously in shows such as 'The Royle Family' and 'The Office'. Its humour contains a distinctly (but not overly) northern flavour to it; for once the viewer will be confronted with a look at the South of the country and its people from an outsider’s perspective.
The show seeks to explore the extraordinary bonds that form between young people from different backgrounds all tied to the underlying, inescapable reality of studentdom: nobody really knows why they are at university, how they got there and what they are meant to be doing there. Whilst an obvious, immediate appeal exists to students past and present, the show’s wider, more mainstream charm lies in its core aspect of human relationships, relationships strengthened if only because there’s bugger-all else to do.
Thoughts, anyone?
