I do like a sitcom that tries to pay heed to
the specificity of the place where it’s set and times and attitudes of when it
was made. Even when it’s only moderately funny, Sink or Swim is always
quite interesting dramatically. Brian's girlfriend Sonia, a hippy ecologist
trying to live by her principles, is a well-drawn character - no more or less
foolish than the brothers, and not the laughable shrew that such a figure runs
a risk of becoming.
I'm particularly impressed by the detail that writer Alex Shearer puts into things like Sonia's special recipe - aubergine (which people still called eggplant in the eighties) stuffed with cottage cheese (although Sara Corper actually mis-says "pottage cheese"), marinated with goat's yoghurt with garlic, coriander, cloves and raisins. It gives the viewer's imagination something tangible to work on. It’s nearly alright as a recipe, a plausibility which makes it funny. There are just too many clashing ingredients in it. I'd imagine that aubergines, goat's milk and coriander would have been more unfamiliar to the audience of 37 years ago.
Shearer achieves a similarly amusing and well-judged piling on of details earlier in the episode, when the brothers are reading a small ad for a second hand car.
A couple of odd mini-studio sets in this one for scenes that you would expect to see on film - a Hampstead Everyman-type cinema which we only see the back two rows of and the back of two vans for a stretch of dialogue in the middle of an otherwise filmed sequence in a car lot.
I'm particularly impressed by the detail that writer Alex Shearer puts into things like Sonia's special recipe - aubergine (which people still called eggplant in the eighties) stuffed with cottage cheese (although Sara Corper actually mis-says "pottage cheese"), marinated with goat's yoghurt with garlic, coriander, cloves and raisins. It gives the viewer's imagination something tangible to work on. It’s nearly alright as a recipe, a plausibility which makes it funny. There are just too many clashing ingredients in it. I'd imagine that aubergines, goat's milk and coriander would have been more unfamiliar to the audience of 37 years ago.
Shearer achieves a similarly amusing and well-judged piling on of details earlier in the episode, when the brothers are reading a small ad for a second hand car.
A couple of odd mini-studio sets in this one for scenes that you would expect to see on film - a Hampstead Everyman-type cinema which we only see the back two rows of and the back of two vans for a stretch of dialogue in the middle of an otherwise filmed sequence in a car lot.
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