I remember
watching this first episode when I was eleven, knew that I liked The Good
Life, and not getting much from it... It took a couple of series for me to
grow up enough to realise where the comedy was.
That said, the immediate characterisation of Martin is pretty extreme. His pettiness and fussiness is very funny, but it’s hard for a viewer to initially find any reason to find him sympathetic. Even his good points are effectively undercut - rather than taking Anne to the cinema he dutifully goes all the way to Brighton to buy the old lady a particular crochet hook, but then we learn that she doesn't particularly want it anyway. There's a rare early moment of Paul actively scoring a point off Martin ("Why don't you write 'Folder' on your folder, too, so that you know what it is?"), coming over as a bit rattled, rather than being consciously nice to him whatever Martin does.
That said, the immediate characterisation of Martin is pretty extreme. His pettiness and fussiness is very funny, but it’s hard for a viewer to initially find any reason to find him sympathetic. Even his good points are effectively undercut - rather than taking Anne to the cinema he dutifully goes all the way to Brighton to buy the old lady a particular crochet hook, but then we learn that she doesn't particularly want it anyway. There's a rare early moment of Paul actively scoring a point off Martin ("Why don't you write 'Folder' on your folder, too, so that you know what it is?"), coming over as a bit rattled, rather than being consciously nice to him whatever Martin does.
I have a theory
that this first episode was originally two scripts, now welded together as one.
The plot in the second half (the Close's demonstration against the lorry driver
who inconsiderately parks there) seems to come completely out of nowhere and
then dominates the rest of the episode without having really been led up to in
any way. (Episode 3 of Colin's Sandwich is another occasion where I
think this happens)
No comments:
Post a Comment