A Comedy On These Days: Outnumbered - The School Run/ The Special Bowl/ The City Farm (28/29/30 August 2007)

 A comedy on these days... It's been serendipitous that the first episodes of this came up first, and instructive to replicate the original pattern of transmission. You might think that stripping three episodes over three consecutive nights on BBC1 would be running something of a risk, but it actually works really well, achieving something like optimum viewing conditions.
 

 Seeing this as three daily episodes means that the parts are close enough together for the viewer to retain all the information, but also spaced enough apart to build up some reflection about what you've seen and anticipation as to how the story might progress. There are a lot of strands in this programme, which get built up gradually, and the series sensibly introduces one new major family member per episode in parts two and three (Sue's sister and father).
 

 A strange thing about the cumulative effect of watching is that (even though I was enjoying it) I hardly laughed at all in the first episode, but was laughing a lot by episode three. This might be because the first episode, which establishes the family and what sort of programme this is through showing a workday morning spent rounding up the children and getting them to school, is intensely stressful to watch. The continual effort of having to keep track of multiple children, and constant distraction from any grown-up concerns that you have to deal with is one of the most effortful common experiences, and the style of the episode conveys this busyness through a very short average shot length that I found exhausting to watch.
 

 By episode three things have calmed down a little, and the rivalry between the two sisters and managing the doddering father creates a different type of tension on top of the parenting. David Ryall is one of those actors whose performances I saw I often find myself thinking back upon - the first role I saw him play was God (!) in a thinly-attended Katie Mitchell production of The Mysteries at the Barbican Pit, the last one as Feste in Twelfth Night in what I think was his last stage performance. He always seemed to exude a distinctive sense of morose authority, also seen here in the part of the grandfather, even through a haze of dementia.

A Comedy On This Day: As Time Goes By - Animal Magnetism (6 August 2000)

 There are very few domestic scenes that can't be made more interesting to watch by the introduction of a dog, and this enjoyable episode - in which Jean and Lionel are adopted by a stray - is no exception.
 

 We've moved on a bit in the thirty years since 'H. G. Wells', Patrick Cargill's St. Bernard, used to leap all over the performers in Father, Dear Father, and As Time Goes By has more in the way of resources and time to fully integrate Dexter (a Beardie-Border collie cross) into the story. The cur is first seen on location, following Geoffrey Palmer down some rather cold-looking Eastcote streets, in some pleasingly mobile follow shots that accentuate the drama and pathos of the situation.
 
 The combination of advances in editing technology and highly professional animal training mean that the hound really comes into his own in the domestic studio sequences, sitting, running, climbing, etc. in always perfectly realised actions. Even with an animal as well-drilled as Dexter, though, reacting to a dog will always reveal something spontaneous about the performers beyond their characters, encouraging a benevolent mood in the viewer.
 

 Dexter himself was clearly a top pedigree professional, with more credits to his name over his career than plenty of minor players in British TV dramas and comedies have enjoyed. The only problem with his appearance is that he dominates the action, and the plotty business that he catalyses - an encounter between the daughter and a policeman old boyfriend of the secretary- is a good deal less edifying than everyone's reactions to Dexter. Of greater interest is a reminiscent speech by Lionel that the reclaimed dog inspires about an old stray that he adopted in Kenya. It doesn't really serve much immediate purpose, but is an obvious gift to the two star actors to make something of, and creates a satisfying conclusion to the episode.

A Comedy On This Day: Rob Brydon's Annually Retentive - 1990 (1 August 2006)

 The fictional panel show-within-a-show would be a particularly dismal watch this week, with guest stars Jo Brand, Paul Foot, Ronni Ancona (who refuses to do impressions) and - especially unimpressive - Heat magazine's Boyd Hilton. The last of these is a particularly grizzly period touch, reminding the present-day viewer of how prominent that publication was for a few years in the noughties, before the Internet swept it away.

 Annually Retentive has an unusual structure. You assume that there are two simultaneous timelines (the panel show and the backstage preparations), but it's actually less linear than that. About half a dozen different stages of the production are shown in intercut scenes (Rob and the booker, Rob and the producer, the team meeting, the dressing room, etc.), with the viewer not told which order they occur in (you can work it out, but it is quite hard work).

 As a lot of the comedy comes from the Brydon character talking about other comedians behind their back and then having to deal with them in performance, the effect of this editing making the programme seem more interested in demonstrating a thesis about media representation of celebrity than it is in telling a story. You can see why it didn't much appeal to a wide audience.

 This episode has some of the series' most scathingly specific takedowns (and best moments), when a fed-up Brydon performs lengthy impersonations of Johnny Vaughan and Ross ("I appeal to students") Noble.

A Comedy On This Day: Saxondale - Janet (31 July 2006)

 I would imagine that Steve Coogan is at his happiest as a performer when he has an audience and he knows that they're laughing. In Saxondale, a reflective post-Office character piece, Steve Coogan didn't have the reassurance of that audience in recording.

 This is the last episode of the first series, and two impulses are in play. There's a wish to achieve a relatively muted, subtle, comedy that leaves quite a lot of the work of interpretation to the viewer's intelligence. This is seen at its most acute when Tommy and young Raymond have a job disinfesting the home of a dead man. Tommy expects to find the typical residence of a lonely pensioner, and then, looking through the record collection, discovers that the deceased was a middle-aged man much like himself. Apart from the closely-drawn accuracy of Tommy's reactions and little bits of phrasing there isn't anything actually funny about this, but that's not something you mind when watching.

 At the same time, a broader desire to please is also in play. Tommy's awareness of his mortality and failings also gets tested through temptation, which takes the voluptuous form of a merry widow who wants some mice removed. Janet represents the appeal that Tommy's regular girlfriend, Mags, holds for him, but in a more confident, prosperous, form without any of the ties of domesticity. This vivid character creates an opportunity for some seriously impressive vamping from Lisa Tarbuck, but seems to exist in a more colourful, coarser comedy world than the rest of the programme.

 Much of the interest of the episode is found in the friction between these two forms of humour, such as when Tommy disrupts a suggestive conversation with Janet during a meal out - "Do you mind if we stop doing all this innuendo? It's mentally exhausting."

 Tommy manages to walk away from Janet before he does any lasting damage to his relationship with Mags. The catalysing action that prompts his conscience into doing the right thing is when she puts on some seductive music, and plays some Phil Collins-era Genesis...

A Comedy On This Day: As Time Goes By - A Deeply Personal Problem (30 July 2000)

 Each time that I see an episode of this, I get a dislocated sensation that's peculiar to watching very minor material performed to the highest level. This week's plot - Lionel and Jean try to cover up a visit from her daughter's estranged boyfriend by making up a story about a mysterious 'personal problem' of Lionel's, and then having to cope with the embarrassing consequences - could hardly be more ordinary. You don't often see Judi Dench performing in such small beer as this. Its interesting to see qualities distinct to her - very quick responses, sense of an individual moral understanding - put to service in something so routine.

 One benefit of the high production values of this series is that the initial scene (of the two daughters dropping their keys in the street and getting soaking wet) includes the most convincing artificially induced rain that I've seen in a television programme. Normally something that looks a bit wrong on television, seeing it realised so well is surprisingly exciting.

A Comedy On This Day: Annually Retentive - 1981 (25 July 2006)

 Annually Retentive's celebrity guests received uneven amounts of attention and ribbing. This week, Josie d'Arby and Robert Webb are given little to do, while Russell Brand gets the lion's share of comic business. The programme catches him at just the right time, during the first few months of his period of immense fame when he was still a novelty rather than a ubiquitous presence. Although I've always found his talents as a comedian and actor erratic, one thing that he is very good at is playing a slightly caricatured version of himself, flirting with Sharon Horgan's character by asking her if she's ovulating.

 Another merit of this programme occurs when one of the guests is a comic who you can't abide. I've never liked Marcus Brigstocke, finding him unbearably belligerent and shouty, so it's good to see the Brydon character skewering him in programme planning:

BRYDON: (dismissively) Oh, let's get Marcus on. He'll probably come on dressed very conservatively and then say something a little bit risqué. That's what he does, okay? Looks like a geography teacher, says something risqué. It's a one-note joke.

A Comedy On This Day: Saxondale - Fleas (24 July 2006)

 One of Saxondale's less-recognised virtues is its depth of research into the mechanics of pest control. Apart from maybe the odd rat catcher in country tales, it's not a profession that I've ever seen depicted fictionally elsewhere. It's never especially funny, but whenever Tommy goes about his work and explains what he's doing there's an automatic level of inherent interest, and his understanding of the life cycles of the parasites that he's eliminating is a subtle grace note for the character.

 This episode uses the pest control angle especially well, with the main plot involving some detective work from Tommy, who attempts to prove that a larger, more corporate, firm are defrauding their clients by re-infesting their premises. There's a bit more to chew on and a wider ethical perspective with this than this week's other cause of rage for Tommy, getting his car clamped.

A Comedy On This Day: Rob Brydon's Annually Retentive - 1997 (11 July 2006)

 This sharp and specific media satire is beginning to require historical footnotes. This especially struck me when Sharon Horgan's P.A. tries to justify booking Richard Bacon for the show to Brydon - "He's actually better known now for insulting those fat people on Top Of The Pops" I wonder what a fifteen year-old comedy fan of today - who likes The Trip say, and wants to investigate more of Rob Brydon's work - would make of this programme?

 The other three guests on the first edition of the terrible panel show are Lucy Porter, Gail Porter and David Mitchell. All come with baggage and stipulations:

BRYDON: So we've got a bald woman who doesn't want people to mention that she's bald, we've got an unknown woman who would like us not to mention that she's unknown, we've got a man who's primarily known for voicing the thoughts in his head who wouldn't like us to mention voicing the thoughts in his head. Are we allowed to say that Jane Moore works for the gutter press? Would she rather we didn't mention that? Is Dave Gorman asking us not to mention that he looks like a lecturer or goes on the Internet a lot? Is everybody using this show as a chance to make a fresh start and go in a new direction?

 This is a hard show to warm to in some ways, with the hero being vain, disagreeable and unfriendly. His one saving grace is that he's always right about the shoddiness of much British broadcasting of his time... Whether that was enough for viewers, I'm not sure.

A Comedy On This Day: Saxondale - Cockroaches (10 July 2006)

 I'd completely forgotten that Tommy Saxondale had a daughter, an important detail that seems to go unmentioned in other episodes. Including her and her boyfriend isn't an entirely happy fit with how the series normally works. Tommy's young assistant Raymond (always a funny part of the programme) gets relegated to only a few minutes' appearance, as his presence would crowd a storyline about Saxondale trying to understand young people.

 The storyline about Tommy misjudging his daughter's boyfriend (James Lance, who played Ben, the cocky young man working at the Linton Travel Tavern, in I'm Alan Partridge) has some unsatisfactory aspects to it. The emphasis is on telling a 'lesson learned' story about Tommy discovering some empathy with his daughter through seeing the boyfriend through her eyes. This comes across as a bit sentimental, and works against what definitely would be funny, Saxondale becoming angered by a silly youth with an incomprehensible young person's manner. Also, the scene of Tommy's great misunderstanding of the boyfriend (he thinks that he keeps going to the lavatory to take drugs, when he really just has irritable bowel syndrome) isn't very well set up. You think, there must be a longer edit of this episode somewhere which makes more of this situation.

 From time to time when watching this series I've found myself thinking, "Who is it that I know who Saxondale - just occasionally - reminds me of?" I've now realised... When Tommy Saxondale puts his glasses on, he fleetingly reminds me of leading television researcher Andrew Pixley. Not that Andrew has any of Saxondale's personality disorders or unwittingly threatening qualities, though!

A Comedy On This Day: Saxondale - Wasps (3 July 2006)

Iggy Pop's over fifty and he still canes it.

Dude, Iggy Pop only canes it on stage. He still has to go home and descale the kettle.

 Watching this in 2018 is a qualitatively different experience than it was in 2006. I was 34 then and had a much happier distance from these characters in their fifties. Watched now, it’s a stark warning of where I could be heading!

 Its a very nuanced comedy, which encourages the viewer to reward themselves for emotional literacy if they register how each scene develops line-by-line, when the characters' understanding of each other constantly fluctuates depending on whether they say the wrong or right thing. This must be very acutely done because, even though I haven't seen it since broadcast, I do find that I can remember everything that happens or gets said in this programme. My response this second time around is wry appreciation rather than very much in the way of active laughter, though.

 It is very good at capturing the way that certain blokey men with popular cultural interests of that generation talk to each other, in deliberately clever, allusive, catchphrasey language, and the cusp within that sort of speech between what they say being either really impressive or really irritating to listen to.

A Comedy On This Day: That Mitchell & Webb Look (11 June 2009)

 Was there ever a Mitchell & Webb Look sketch that wasn't funnier when it was on the radio? Much of their comedy achieves its effect through linguistic precision and relentlessly pursuing the logic of an idea to a degree that goes further than people would normally ever consider (for example, in this episode, a pair of BBC commissioners establishing how The Apprentice will work in perpetuity as a programme in which the contestants must be idiots, and the audience will have to either be idiots to take it seriously or smug ironists congratulating themselves for noticing the premise's idiocy). Without pictures this intelligence felt very nimble and quick-witted. On television, however, I'm continually noticing the costumes and make-up, the set, David Mitchell's unease at playing most of the characters, etc. and it starts to feel a lot more laboured.

 The thing that most amused me in this edition was the pair taking receipt of a pair of Mitchell & Webb action figures, props with a tactile interest that I'd like to examine further.

 (This must be the only programme that I own on DVD where all four series are on different labels - Contender, Fremantle, BBC, Network!)

A Comedy On This Day: People Like Us - The Actor (10 June 2001)

 David Tennant plays a young actor (Rob Harker) spending a day around Soho, who manages to cock up a voice-over, an interview and an audition within the space of a few hours.

 Although the comedy of this piece - mainly concerned with escalating misunderstandings played in a minor key - does raise genuine laughs, I get left with a sense of melancholia and unease after watching it, rather than mirth. In its muted way, it’s very skillfully constructed with each scene showing a new aspect of this young man's flaws, traumas and neuroses. The viewer is given particular empathetic insight through an interview with his uncomprehending parents, and the unexpected appearance of an ex at what appears to be the one moment's grace that he gets.

 The mood of unease is perhaps magnified a little by 17 years' historical distance, with the actor spending his day in the part of Central London that I knew best when I was young. I'm struck in the Soho street scenes by the presence of more ordinary life and less conspicuous wealth. Always interesting to see theatre (or cinema) fronts in West End scenes, as you can date what you're seeing precisely by what's on. Rob Harker walks outside the Wyndham's and Albery several times, where respectively Art (already in its fourth year) and the bold transfer from the Royal Court Upstairs of Caryl Churchill's Far Away are playing.

A Comedy On This Day: Rob Brydon's Annually Retentive - 1984/ Who Do You Think You Are? (4 June 2007)

(Rob Brydon arrives in his car outside the Public Records Office in Cardiff.)

BRYDON (inside car to camera): (smugly) Here we go. They make a bit of a fuss of me in Wales.

(He leaves the car, which he - surely illegally - parks right in front of the building.)

INCREDULOUS PASSERBY: (in strong Welsh accent) WAN-KER!

 The series ends in a curious way - with the mock panel show perhaps having exhausted itself, we see Brydon appearing in (and behind the scenes of) a mock episode of Who Do You Think You Are? instead, skewering how some egotistical personalities seem to have little interest in family history in that programme.

 As you'd expect, it feels a bit different than before, partly because the parodied programme is of a higher quality, but also because there's rather less of a distinction between an obviously-performed programme like a panel show and the comedian's life offstage than there is in a biographical documentary.

 The distinction is quite subtle at its best moments, such as Brydon interacting awkwardly with his father - because the father is acting inappropriately for the camera in one scene, and then because that's how the two men are together in the next. It works well though, and was a good way to end it.

A Comedy On This Day: People Like Us - The Journalist (3 June 2001)

 Watching from a distance of seventeen years, I sense a particular note of unhappiness in this episode that the others don't have. It's because while, say, vicars or pilots are still with us the subject of this week's investigation - the Long Ashton Gazette, a local paper for a small East Midlands town with a staff of four - is an institution that wouldn't exist by now. Even though a lot of the comedy stems from the moribund nature of the paper, its a bit less funny watching something that's gone than it is watching something that hasn't got long to go at the time. The crumpled old editor is Tim Preece, the ambitious, thrusting (but sadly inept and desperate) unpleasant young journalist is Nicola Walker (amusingly described recently as "simultaneously luminous and miserable-looking" by Peter Hitchens in the Mail On Sunday).

 Even by the modest standards of tiny local papers, the Long Ashton Gazette is peculiarly terrible and the attentive viewer can have fun picking up the details of its low quality. I'm particularly taken by the front page story, "MIRACLE FOR JANICE - IT'S TWINS!" illustrated by a photo of a mother with only one baby.

A Comedy On This Day: Rob Brydon's Annually Retentive - 1989 (28 May 2007)

 I would think that this show-within-a-show is the least popular or well-regarded series that Rob Brydon has made. The cynical tone and media setting isn't the sort of thing to attract a broad audience, while comedy fans and TV critics were bound to compare it unfavourably with The Larry Sanders Show.

 I liked it a lot myself - enough to have bought a DVD of the second series anyway! Its partly because its target - a lazily-conceived panel show - is precisely the sort of programme that I generally dislike but still find myself watching. The behind the scenes preparations very effectively skewer the moments in these sorts of shows that make me exclaim, "How on earth did that get in?" while my eyes roll - the particularly contrived questions and forced repartee.

 Casting is very strong in this series. Much of the comedy of the parts of Brydon's manager and producer comes from little nuances of their responses to the conceited star and wouldn't work nearly so well without Sharon Horgan or Russell Tovey to realise them. In particular, Tovey's reactions in a cringe scene (where a fascinated and disapproving Brydon continually presses him to explain various homosexual practices) manage to convey a whole spectrum of reactions; incredulity, discomfort, politely-disguised affront, teasing and at the emotional heart of the scene really quite liking the Brydon character even though he's an idiot.

A Comedy On This Day: People Like Us - The Mother (27 May 2001)

 The way this mockumentary programme is structured means that three types of comedy are always simultaneously in operation; the lives that the documentary is recording, the relationship between (unseen) presenter/ journalist Roy Mallard and his subjects at the time of recording, and Mallard's retrospective voiceover. The three forms, overlaid over each other like a palimpsest, provoke different types of response from the viewer.
 

 Personally, I find the voiceover less interesting and funny than the rest of it, because it's usually repetitive variants of the same lexical joke where a pontifical sentence will fall in on itself and become banal. It’s perhaps a holdover from the programme's radio origins, when this verbal humour didn't have to compete for the listener's attention with interesting visual stuff going on at the same time.

 The other two elements are great, though. The subjective style means that Roy Mallard's interaction with his subjects (in this episode, Tamsin Greig as a fatigued mother) creates a rare complicity between the character and the viewer, which can be quite muted and subtle. Most of the problematic actions in this story stem from Mallard noticing (at the same time as the viewer) a mistake that Jenny is making and momentarily hesitating out of tact, or what he says being slightly misunderstood and not getting an opportunity to correct himself. It feels lifelike to me, but in a way more often encountered in literature than comedy or drama.

 Maybe the cleverest moment is when Jenny is pushing her son's pram past a lake in which ducks are swimming. "Quack quack! Quack quack!" the mother says aloud, in a way that you only get given the leeway to do when a small child accompanies you. A dog, walked by a woman, passes by. "Woof woof" says Roy Mallard, less enthusiastically. "Fuck off!" snaps the woman. It took me a couple of seconds to register what the misunderstanding actually was...

 Something that's always under-represented on screen, even in domestic dramas and comedies, is the actual business of housework - its repetitive and relentless nature, and intermittent difficulty. So a cardinal virtue of this episode lies in one of its main plots. The mother overloads the washing machine, which then breaks down. Because the machine is under guarantee she arranges for someone to come and fix it in a few days. Her mother arrives in the afternoon to look after the baby, and is told by Jenny as she leaves the house in a hurry not to do anything about it because someone is already coming in a few days. When Jenny returns home she is infuriated to discover that her mother has got an unhelpful handyman to visit, who hasn't fixed the machine but has managed to flood the kitchen. A particular reason why Jenny is upset about this turn of events is because she didn't want her husband to know that she overloaded the machine in the first place. There's a causality to this storyline that rings particularly true to me, and which I don't think could have been achieved through a conventional sitcom form.

A Comedy On This Day: Peep Show - Jeremy Broke (16 May 2008)

(Dobbie walks away)

MARK (internal thought): Did the right thing there, pretty sure. DON'T listen to you heart. That's what no one tells you, but that's probably the real grown-up truth.

 Some of its viewers seemed to respond primarily to the more grotesque incidents (in this episode Jez in a sperm bank, trying to stimulate his masturbatory impulses with the unpromising visual material of the Queen's head on a £20 note), but Peep Show was always so much more than that. Its one of the most subtly and elaborately structured comedy programmes, and one that I can return to again and again. The viewer's access to Mark and Jez's thought processes means that we gain an insight into why these characters will always by the authors of their own misfortunes, as well as the mechanics of how they contrive to get into appalling messes.

 Both men's difficulties this week stem initially from momentary lapses of judgement - Jez enrages Mark by stealing a sausage off his plate, Mark approaches a woman in a bar whom he already knows isn't interested in him - with each station of their subsequent escalating misfortunes referring back to their previous thoughts and mistakes, and forming a thesis (about Jeremy's impulsiveness and Mark's yearning to prove himself by claiming to have a girlfriend).

 On top of this, there's the novel-like cumulative narrative interest in the development of on-going storylines (the terrible workplace of JLB Credit, Mark's divorce), helped by some acutely good long-term casting. Olivia Coleman might be a very familiar face now, but her ability to convey Sophie's rage and exhaustion in her one scene in this episode has a real conviction to it, and shows sides to her character that weren't apparent in the early series.

 Peep Show's Croydon/anywhere setting and style also provide an interesting historical document of the textures and patterns of everyday life, changing over a decade. For example, Mark attends a speed dating session in this episode, as such a person might do (albeit without pleasure), for only a few years in the noughties. Are they much of a thing anymore? I would have thought that dating apps would have killed off most of them by now.

A Comedy On This Day: The IT Crowd - Aunt Irma Visits (3 March 2006)

 There's an appealing handmade quality about the IT Crowd. Its not just because it was still a studio audience sitcom made at a time when these were largely considered to be old hat. Its also something in the performances - exaggerated and quite broad while remaining psychologically true - and the way that the jokes are set up that differentiated it from a lot of other television comedy at the time. I think that it’s a quality of the pleasure of sharing funny ideas. Its crammed full of very ingenious and elaborate jokes but is keen to ensure that they all register so that the viewer can enjoy them, rather than to demonstrate their creators' smartness and taste.

 It's cheerful nature can also conceal quite how highly ambitious it is. The premise of this episode - Moss and Roy picking up Jen's PMT by osmosis - is fraught with pitfalls. Its only once you think of the many ways that this theme could be handled badly (it could be condescending, in poor taste, over-elaborate or overly right-on) that you fully appreciate how well achieved it is, and the range of funny mileage that it gets from the idea. But what I like best about this series is that its one of the best depictions of how friendship between men and women can work in television comedy. Indirectly, its a programme about how three friends get on with - and care for - each other in a way that feels convincing, optimistic and true.

A Comedy On This Day: Spaced - Change (2 March 2001)

 I never saw this much-admired series at the time (and have never seen it since). It always sounded like the sort of cult television-fanboy thing that I wouldn't enjoy very much to me. Everyone has some similar instinctive prejudices about the programmes that we don't watch. Because no one can watch everything, everybody has some sort of instinctive "don't need to see that" filter. So it’s interesting to discover what I was missing out on.

 The central premise from which the comedy seems to stem is through applying the principles of culty popular culture to everyday life. Because I haven't seen most of the things that are being referenced, I always feel that I'm getting these sorts of jokes at one remove and they work at an intellectual, rather than empathetic level. Its also a bit of a jolt when you see something from the turn of the century after watching a lot of earlier television - the average shot length is much shorter and scenes are now shown from any number of perspectives and distances, making the thing feel more assembled and less free-flowing. I can also tell that there are a lot of gags and details that are designed to reward multiple viewing, which is fair enough if you're committed to watching something a lot of times, but perhaps detracts from the initial viewing experience.

 What is interesting is how precisely of its time the setting is, and how it reflects something of the lives and concerns of people of around my age and background, living in the very last years before the Internet much affected how we did things. Urban life with little funds, but precariously cushioned against actual poverty, these people in the last throes of youth have spent a lot of time in their teens and twenties sitting around and watching videos together. There's something smart about their frame of reference, but there's also a lack of any broader social-political-historical-cultural context to their worldview, which feels a bit hollow to me.

A Comedy On This Day: Marion & Geoff - The Wife (12 February 2003)

 A programme that I'd never seen before. There's an interesting essay by Steven Peacock in which he describes Marion & Geoff as being a comedy of gaps and spaces - between hopeful Keith's understanding of the world and the way the world treats him, between his recollection and anticipation of events and the unseen events themselves. The writing seems artless and spontaneous, but is really very finely crafted, registering several different tenses and timescales. 

 Looking at this episode visually, I'm struck by its perpetual in-between locations - parked outside the buildings where the family the chauffer works for are doing tangible things in, or driving through London roads and streets (some of which I recognise as Dulwich - the landscape has that leafy feel of the more prosperous districts of South London). And the character of Keith fills in the gaps with his generous readings of his employers, and misplaced optimism and makes the story affecting.

 Only one thing mars the comedy - the recurrent use of some godawful indie-schmindie mopey-wopey singer-songwriter dirge. This type of musical editorialising is usually distracting even when it uses really good songs, but with music of this low a calibre it breaks a spell and kills a mood.