Boy Meets Girl (2009)

Here's a fun proposition: likeable duo Martin Freeman and Rachael Stirling as two strangers who wind up trapped in each other's bodies. Cue some Life On Mars-style existential crises as the pair grapple with each other's lives and endeavour to return to a normal state of affairs in the first of this surreal but promising four-parter.

Here's a turn-up for the books: a new ITV comedy miniseries that is both funnier and more original than its plot description - a woman and a man swapping bodies after being struck by lightning - suggests. Much of the credit for that goes to the leads, Martin Freeman and Rachael Stirling, both of whom play their alter-ego roles with enough aplomb to keep the plot afloat - he as a successful fashion journalist called Veronica trapped inside the body of a lazy conspiracy theorist called Danny; she as the reverse. The focus in this opening episode is more on Stirling's character (female body, male mind) as she attempts to use her new journalistic contacts to find Danny, while simultaneously fending off the advances of her boyfriend Jay (Paterson Joseph).

It couldn't matter less if a drama kicks off with an improbability at the outset, while viewers are still settling down and re-arranging the cushions. What matters is that everything follows on logically from there. David Allison's strangely fascinating comedy-drama begins with just such an improbability, as two people (Martin Freeman and Rachael Stirling) exchange bodies and lives after a freak accident involving an electricity pylon. The man is trapped inside a woman's body and is forced to wear high heels all day, write articles for a newspaper on fashion and gossip about other men over lunch. The woman has to slob around in a track suit, never tidying up, smoking roll-ups, eating junk food and behaving like a semi-housetrained Neanderthal. Both end up looking at the world afresh and not entirely liking what they see. It is nothing if not unusual - and for that alone it is worth watching.

Martin Freeman and Rachael Stirling head a strong cast trying their best in what becomes a bit like Life On Mars meets the movie Freaky Friday, but not as good as either.

Danny Reed is a woman trapped in a man's body. Or is it the other way around? Martin Freeman and Rachael Stirling star in this gender-swapping switcheroo comedy where, after a lightning strike, two strangers wake up to find that they've traded places.

Although Martin Freeman is the better known of the two, it's Stirling - best known for her role in Tipping The Velvet as well as for being Diana Rigg's daughter - who gets the lion's share of screen time in this first episode.

With the body of Veronica but the brain of Danny, her reactions as she - or he - discovers she now has a handsome boyfriend (Peep Show's Paterson Joseph) and a luxury apartment are a wonderful mixture of horror and delight.

Mind you, not even a lightning strike can explain why the front page story on the local Manchester newspaper Veronica works for is about a traffic jam in Dublin.

As Danny and Veronica try to find their missing selves, this four-parter has a lot in common with ITV's recent hit Lost In Austen, because once Danny has stopped playing with his own breasts, he sees all the tosh women supposedly have to put up with and he's having none of it. In that respect, you can tell it was written by a man.

But while the cliches are impossible to avoid - and we'd feel cheated if they weren't there - they're handled deftly enough to sweep you along.

If you can cope with the fact that the central idea is completely barmy (and come on, there's no crime in that), then you should find this new Friday night comedy-drama series a whole lot of fun.

There are plenty of familiar faces popping up in the cast, including Angela Griffin and Marshall Lancaster (Ashes To Ashes) as Danny's DIY store colleagues, plus Paterson Joseph (Peep Show) and James Lance (Moving Wallpaper) as fashion journalist Veronica's boyfriend and lover respectively.

This madcap four-part comedy drama sees Martin Freeman employ his handy 'I'm very bewildered' acting as a dopey DIY store worker who gets struck by lightning and finds himself trapped in the body of sassy female fashion journalist Veronica (Rachael Stirling). While trying to find out what the devil has happened to his old self, Danny has to learn how to manage stilettos, bras and a boyfriend... Good fun.

Martin Freeman plays Danny, and Rachael Stirling is Veronica - two strangers who end up swapping bodies thanks to the freak affects of a storm. With hilarious results. If not for the presence of two engaging leads - Freeman can still pull it together in a post The Office world - it would be easy to dismiss this as fluffy nonsense. As it stands, the pair's attempts to get back to the right body become quite charming thanks to good performances and what could have been a disaster becomes quite entertaining. It's possibly in the wrong slot, though.

Martin Freeman is on home turf playing a lovable loser who works in a DIY store until ... dah-da-daaaah ... he is struck by lightning and transmogri-techno-babbled into the body of a mwaah-mwaah fashion journalist played by Rachael Stirling. Fish out of water hilarity ensues. You might think that the premise is the sort of thing that Jim Carrey or Rob Schneider would find behind the sofa on a wet Tuesday, but the two leads have enough chops to pull it off, just about. Also, it has James Lance in it, who tvBite definitely has a bit of a man-crush on. Worth a look. Part one of FOUR, which seems a bit de trop, mind you.

Boy Meets Girl - Part 1 Review

Sadly, beyond the base-level fun of seeing a man cope with a woman's lifestyle and body, there wasn't much about Boy Meets Girl to lure me into watching the next three episodes.