Stewart Harcourt
- Writer
Press clippings
One sitcom I won't be sticking with is Sky One's Agatha Raisin and in fact I'm surprised I made it through the first episode. I have to say I didn't have a lot of knowledge of the central character played by Ashley Jensen as I missed the pilot episode 'The Quiche of Death.' But I was intrigued enough to give the first episode partly as I believed it to be a pastiche of Agatha Christie whodunnits and Midsomer Murders-esque small town crime shows. How wrong I was, as instead of giving us a gentler A Touch of Cloth, writers Stewart Harcourt and M.C. Beaton seem more focused on concentrating on their heroine's love life. From what I could ascertain from this first episode Agatha was a rather ditzy PR woman who people believed had a good ability to solve crimes. However a lot of what happened in this instalment saw Agatha stumbling around in the dark for the majority of the time before realising that the answer was under her nose from the outset. In fact Agatha's main aim throughout the episode seemed to be to snag James Lacey (Jamie Glover), the attached man of her dreams who was posing as her husband as part of an undercover operation to root out the murderer of the head of the local rambling society. I personally feel as if crime shows such as Midsomer Murders are in need of some sort of spoof but Agatha Raisin doesn't even attempt to do that. I found it instead to be a strange mix of crime drama, romantic comedy and full on slapstick humour with none of these elements really being given time to breathe. In fact I would go as far as to say that the funniest sequence in this first episode of Agatha Raisin was the sequence in which Agatha was trapped inside a Wendy House with several other characters. It's a shame that the show is such a dud as I'm a fan of Ashley Jensen but she's ill-served here by a rather annoying character and a poorly written script. The rest of the cast don't fare much better with Matthew Horne being given a one-note character as Agatha's camp assistant from London. In fact it's only Katy Wix as Agatha's formidable cleaning lady Gemma who's able to rise above the awful material and produce something vaguely resembling comedy. Apart from Wix's performance there's very little positives that I can bestow on Agatha Raisin and between this show and Rovers it seems that Sky One has currently gone off the boil when it comes to producing decent comedies.
Matt, The Custard TV, 12th June 2016We learn more about the unconventional relationship between the poised, self-possessed Rowan and her married lover Tommy (Celia Imrie and Larry Lamb) as Stewart Harcourt's likeable family drama continues. Their love is tested by a family crisis, when Rowan's troubled granddaughter decides she must track down her mother. None of this runs particularly deep, but Love and Marriage rolls along nicely, and Imrie and Lamb are an engaging couple.
As a family barbecue and camping trip unfold, all of the Paradises get together for a party. It's a noisy occasion, but truths emerge as their various family lives begin to take divergent paths.
Alison Graham, Radio Times, 26th June 2013Love and Marriage, ITV's new six-part comedy drama, was about sacrifice. Alison Steadman played Pauline Paradise, a 60-year-old matriarch, who had spent her whole adult life caring for her large family and receiving not-very-much thanks in return.
When she left the house on her last day before retiring, her taciturn husband Ken (Duncan Preston) didn't even look up from his paper. When her father died, he went to bed and hoped she wouldn't want to talk about it. And Pauline and Ken were not the only ones with problems. Their offspring were all in trouble. Kevin, their eldest son, was in debt and newly redundant; Heather, their highly strung daughter, was racing against the biological clock to get pregnant; and Martin, their youngest son, was worn out by the demands of his huge family.
And that's just the "drama" half of this "comedy drama". To squeeze in the humour as well was asking a lot of writer Stewart Harcourt and, on the evidence of the first episode, perhaps a bridge too far. It's difficult to be funny when you're so busy establishing characters and plot (although including a joke about the Manson family, the subject of biting satire forty years ago, was pretty desperate).
So there are grounds for optimism. As we get to know the Paradise clan better, the jokes will hopefully improve. In the meantime, the drama should keep people tuning in.
Paul Kendall, The Telegraph, 6th June 2013Alison Steadman shines in this over-complicated show
I think my issues with Love and Marriage started almost instantly as writer Stewart Harcourt introduced the various members of the Paradise family by having the couples introduce themselves straight to camera.
Unreality TV, 5th June 2013