Cold Feet

Cold Feet episode two review

This comedy drama continues to make us feel warm inside.

Twitter outrage after Cold Feet second city gaffe

Viewers of the much loved show took to Twitter in their droves after leading character Angela wrongly referred to Manchester, where much of Cold Feet is based, as England's second largest city, which is actually Birmingham.

Adam kicks off this second episode in typical cheeky chappie fashion. Standing at the altar with his beautiful bride who's waiting for him to say "I do", he starts to panic. He sorts out his worries in the toilets, telling his pals after the ceremony that he can't go and live in Singapore with his new wife like he told her he would. He can't leave his son at such a difficult age. "When would be the best time to break it to her?" he asks. "Er, before you got married?" is the reply.

So while Adam panics and frets as he goes through "the five stages of grief - and all before take off", poor old Pete is the opposite. He's sunken in a terrible depression, with no money and no hope. Jenny is similarly fed-up with her lot, and tries to recapture the spark by suggesting a bit of bedroom role play, but poor Pete has no appetite for anything.

One should not, of course, kvetch about the return of Cold Feet: it was the first time round, and is once more, a smart, funny and gently affecting drama, well written and acted and so forth. Its exhumation does remind you, however, how little TV of this quality Britain now produces. Tonight's second episode further tweaks the tensions simmering among the group of old friends, who are finding themselves enjoying middle age to markedly different degrees.

Cold Feet episode two recap - life begins at 50?

Middle age is not such a barrel of laughs. The whole gang is miserable - apart from Jenny, who wants to do some kinky role play ... as a mill-owner.

Pete's depression takes centre stage in moving episode

In an emotional second visit to the gang of Manchester friends, John Thomson's character finally opens up to his troubles.

Old wives' tales have had a bad press down the years. If you drop a fork it means a man is coming to visit. A loaf, once cut, cannot be turned upside down. Brexit means an end to straight bananas (or, indeed, Brexit means Brexit). But just occasionally, the biddies get it right: Cold Feet, warm heart.

It washed back all over our screens, marred only by the kind of breathless media hype that might have embarrassed Adolf at Nuremberg, and reminded us of some oddly hopeful days back in '97, when Mr Blair had yet to settle on his cabinet and his chosen faces for sad and happy, let alone on his fascinating career path of millionaire war criminal. The theme tune had changed, sadly (few songs speak to our fin de siecle with the redolence of Space's Female of the Species), but the title typeface was still there in all its spiky, pulsing horror. It was as close as the British got to Friends, with gratifyingly less glucose: Manhattan would never have dared to kill off its Rachel.

And it was by far the finest reheating of leftovers in this season of retro-love. Always well written, treading that tightrope between emotion and sentimentality that Manchester somehow seems always to get right, unlike some of its more shouty neighbours, this return also simply reminded us of the quality of the original cast. Witness how many have since carved out singular successes, or in James Nesbitt's case, multiple, having proved himself one of the few actors - Olivia Colman's another, and recently, Tom Hollander - equally adept at smart comedy and at drama that truly punches the kidneys.

The action has obviously moved on to midlife crises, and we can expect much filthy angsting over John Thomson's all-too-believable depression and Robert Bathurst's equally credible lack of capacity for self-examination. There's been a snaring in Singapore by Adam (Nesbitt) of a new wife, who has nothing at all going for her except youth, beauty, wit, money, wisdom, empathy and humour, and who is obviously wrong for him. All Manc life is here, which is to say all life is here, and I am hooked, line and sinker, all over again.

They've apparently moved on in Cornwall too, from tin to copper. Damn your eyes, progress!