Ah, so this is how it began... I didn't catch
this first episode at the time, but went on to watch the rest of the series.
Jesus God, this is a grim half-hour. Grandparents suddenly, unwillingly, having to look after children again is a fine premise for a sitcom, but the initially set-up (their son and daughter-in-law have been killed in a car crash) is always going to be problematic for an ostensibly funny programme. The easiest option would be grandparents who loved their children sometimes finding common ground with the difficult grandchildren through shared grief, though that could be ickily sentimental. A neutral way of doing it would be to have had the parents living in Australia or somewhere, which (with a few deft lines) would explain why the grandchildren are strangers to the grandparents.
This episode certainly doesn't go in for making the grandparents sympathetic figures. The more that we learn about the dead son and daughter-in-law, the less space we are given to empathise with the family's estrangement. One of the first things that we learn is the details of the day of the final breach, at Christmas five years ago when they were served a vegetarian meal and the daughter-in law asked them to smoke in the garden. And you think, well, at most that only sounds a bit irritating... The William Gaunt character even says at one point, "I didn't raise my son to become a vegetarian piano teacher", which doesn't sound like too much of a terrible disappointment. And certainly not worth cutting yourself off from your grandchildren for.
You can sense the audience wondering how to respond to this. They're very keen to laugh at anything that's obviously a joke, which reminds them that they're still watching a comedy. To their credit, Penelope Keith and William Gaunt don't play against the script and mine the story for palliative moments of charm, either. In a way, the presence of an audience holds this particular episode back a bit, because the idea of parents who don't mourn their children's shocking deaths lends itself more obviously to dramatic investigation rather than inspiring laughter. As it is, there are certain significant scenes, like the policeman giving the news, that get moved away from rather too quickly because of their lack of comic potential.
The episode's continual refusal to take any edge off a story of unsympathetic people in a horrendous situation is admirable, but also forbidding and uninviting.
Jesus God, this is a grim half-hour. Grandparents suddenly, unwillingly, having to look after children again is a fine premise for a sitcom, but the initially set-up (their son and daughter-in-law have been killed in a car crash) is always going to be problematic for an ostensibly funny programme. The easiest option would be grandparents who loved their children sometimes finding common ground with the difficult grandchildren through shared grief, though that could be ickily sentimental. A neutral way of doing it would be to have had the parents living in Australia or somewhere, which (with a few deft lines) would explain why the grandchildren are strangers to the grandparents.
This episode certainly doesn't go in for making the grandparents sympathetic figures. The more that we learn about the dead son and daughter-in-law, the less space we are given to empathise with the family's estrangement. One of the first things that we learn is the details of the day of the final breach, at Christmas five years ago when they were served a vegetarian meal and the daughter-in law asked them to smoke in the garden. And you think, well, at most that only sounds a bit irritating... The William Gaunt character even says at one point, "I didn't raise my son to become a vegetarian piano teacher", which doesn't sound like too much of a terrible disappointment. And certainly not worth cutting yourself off from your grandchildren for.
You can sense the audience wondering how to respond to this. They're very keen to laugh at anything that's obviously a joke, which reminds them that they're still watching a comedy. To their credit, Penelope Keith and William Gaunt don't play against the script and mine the story for palliative moments of charm, either. In a way, the presence of an audience holds this particular episode back a bit, because the idea of parents who don't mourn their children's shocking deaths lends itself more obviously to dramatic investigation rather than inspiring laughter. As it is, there are certain significant scenes, like the policeman giving the news, that get moved away from rather too quickly because of their lack of comic potential.
The episode's continual refusal to take any edge off a story of unsympathetic people in a horrendous situation is admirable, but also forbidding and uninviting.
