Monday 28 January 2019

A Comedy On This Day: Ever Decreasing Circles - The New Neighbour (29 January 1984)


 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.
 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