If you grew up with Terry
& June, it can sometimes be a mild culture shock coming to variant text
Happy Ever After. The Fletchers seem (relatively) more sophisticated
than the Medfords - perhaps the difference between living in Ealing Common in
your early forties and living in Purley in your late fifties. The most
surprising thing in this episode is when June consults the calendar in their
kitchen and tells Terry, "That's our weekend in Glyndbourne", which
sounds like an ambitious break to me. That would have made a good story in it's
own right...
Perhaps the middle-aged Terry's career means a bit more to him at this point
than it did in Terry & June, where he's clearly fast approaching
retirement. This week the Fletchers have to entertain a visiting French
businessman to dinner. Jean Paul Bouchard turns out to be - 'ow you say? - charmant,
telling Terry when introduced to June that, "You did not say you 'ave such
a beautiful daughter!" A jealous Terry challenges the visitor to a tennis
match. The filmed sequence feels a bit jarring after 25 minutes in the studio,
with the jump to filmic comedy not helped by the Fletchers visiting the park on
an exceptionally misty, grey day.
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