A Comedy On This Day: May To December - Fools Rush In (9 April 1989)

 The second episode, and this series is running on (considerable) promise, rather than achieving much in the way of actual laughs at this stage. One problem is that its less interesting to see how this pair get together than it becomes watching how other people respond to them once they become a couple.

 It’s full of funny ideas that aren't quite followed through. There's a scene in which the daughter of the Anton Rodgers character invites him to Sunday lunch and tries to set him up with a dressy widow, played by Rosemary Leach. These are surely the optimum conditions to set up an amusing scene, but somewhere along the line it hasn't been thought to give the widow an actual character or any sustained dialogue. The gap between intention and realisation is disappointing.

 The bimbo receptionist in the solicitors office, who's sole purpose being to misunderstand everything that other characters say in an airheaded fashion, is a trying character. That said, her presence provides the one moment that really made me laugh, when Clive Francis' suave middle-aged roué tells her, "My wife doesn't understand me"...

A Comedy On This Day: May To December - I Remember It Well (11 January 1990)

 Over thirty years ago, when I was starting to develop a bit more critical acumen, I remember hearing this exchange in some otherwise wholly forgettable sitcom:

A. I'm being sent to Coventry!
B. Oh, I've always wanted to go there.
A. No - I mean that I'm being ostracized!
B. Does that mean that we won't be able to have any children?

 

 Which struck me at the time as being archetypal formulaic 'comedy' dialogue, which requires a 'funny' misunderstanding line-by-line. When you're not that engaged with what's going on - and the misunderstandings are more there for the sake of constant comic rhythm than to be actually funny - it can have a clunking, creaking, effect upon the viewer. 

 This episode starts off with one such moment, when the spinster solicitor informs the bimbo receptionist that "custody only applies in cases involving minors" and the receptionist replies, "But my Uncle Albert weren't a miner, 'e was a plumber!" It sets a regrettable marker of low quality - priming you to expect little - that takes a long time to lift.

 Which is unfortunate, because the emotional beats of this episode do go on to be genuinely interesting. The central scene (the 26-year old girlfriend introducing her 54-year old boyfriend to her parents) is achieved through techniques - fades to cover ellipses in time, a large close-up of the one silent person at the meal - that feel more like a drama than a sitcom. The episode also looks at the age gap from an interesting angle, looking at how the older man carries decades more experiences and references than his partner, and showing how that can be a burden.