A Comedy On This Day: Saxondale - Janet (31 July 2006)

 I would imagine that Steve Coogan is at his happiest as a performer when he has an audience and he knows that they're laughing. In Saxondale, a reflective post-Office character piece, Steve Coogan didn't have the reassurance of that audience in recording.

 This is the last episode of the first series, and two impulses are in play. There's a wish to achieve a relatively muted, subtle, comedy that leaves quite a lot of the work of interpretation to the viewer's intelligence. This is seen at its most acute when Tommy and young Raymond have a job disinfesting the home of a dead man. Tommy expects to find the typical residence of a lonely pensioner, and then, looking through the record collection, discovers that the deceased was a middle-aged man much like himself. Apart from the closely-drawn accuracy of Tommy's reactions and little bits of phrasing there isn't anything actually funny about this, but that's not something you mind when watching.

 At the same time, a broader desire to please is also in play. Tommy's awareness of his mortality and failings also gets tested through temptation, which takes the voluptuous form of a merry widow who wants some mice removed. Janet represents the appeal that Tommy's regular girlfriend, Mags, holds for him, but in a more confident, prosperous, form without any of the ties of domesticity. This vivid character creates an opportunity for some seriously impressive vamping from Lisa Tarbuck, but seems to exist in a more colourful, coarser comedy world than the rest of the programme.

 Much of the interest of the episode is found in the friction between these two forms of humour, such as when Tommy disrupts a suggestive conversation with Janet during a meal out - "Do you mind if we stop doing all this innuendo? It's mentally exhausting."

 Tommy manages to walk away from Janet before he does any lasting damage to his relationship with Mags. The catalysing action that prompts his conscience into doing the right thing is when she puts on some seductive music, and plays some Phil Collins-era Genesis...

A Comedy On This Day: Saxondale - Fleas (24 July 2006)

 One of Saxondale's less-recognised virtues is its depth of research into the mechanics of pest control. Apart from maybe the odd rat catcher in country tales, it's not a profession that I've ever seen depicted fictionally elsewhere. It's never especially funny, but whenever Tommy goes about his work and explains what he's doing there's an automatic level of inherent interest, and his understanding of the life cycles of the parasites that he's eliminating is a subtle grace note for the character.

 This episode uses the pest control angle especially well, with the main plot involving some detective work from Tommy, who attempts to prove that a larger, more corporate, firm are defrauding their clients by re-infesting their premises. There's a bit more to chew on and a wider ethical perspective with this than this week's other cause of rage for Tommy, getting his car clamped.

A Comedy On This Day: Saxondale - Cockroaches (10 July 2006)

 I'd completely forgotten that Tommy Saxondale had a daughter, an important detail that seems to go unmentioned in other episodes. Including her and her boyfriend isn't an entirely happy fit with how the series normally works. Tommy's young assistant Raymond (always a funny part of the programme) gets relegated to only a few minutes' appearance, as his presence would crowd a storyline about Saxondale trying to understand young people.

 The storyline about Tommy misjudging his daughter's boyfriend (James Lance, who played Ben, the cocky young man working at the Linton Travel Tavern, in I'm Alan Partridge) has some unsatisfactory aspects to it. The emphasis is on telling a 'lesson learned' story about Tommy discovering some empathy with his daughter through seeing the boyfriend through her eyes. This comes across as a bit sentimental, and works against what definitely would be funny, Saxondale becoming angered by a silly youth with an incomprehensible young person's manner. Also, the scene of Tommy's great misunderstanding of the boyfriend (he thinks that he keeps going to the lavatory to take drugs, when he really just has irritable bowel syndrome) isn't very well set up. You think, there must be a longer edit of this episode somewhere which makes more of this situation.

 From time to time when watching this series I've found myself thinking, "Who is it that I know who Saxondale - just occasionally - reminds me of?" I've now realised... When Tommy Saxondale puts his glasses on, he fleetingly reminds me of leading television researcher Andrew Pixley. Not that Andrew has any of Saxondale's personality disorders or unwittingly threatening qualities, though!

A Comedy On This Day: Saxondale - Wasps (3 July 2006)

Iggy Pop's over fifty and he still canes it.

Dude, Iggy Pop only canes it on stage. He still has to go home and descale the kettle.

 Watching this in 2018 is a qualitatively different experience than it was in 2006. I was 34 then and had a much happier distance from these characters in their fifties. Watched now, it’s a stark warning of where I could be heading!

 Its a very nuanced comedy, which encourages the viewer to reward themselves for emotional literacy if they register how each scene develops line-by-line, when the characters' understanding of each other constantly fluctuates depending on whether they say the wrong or right thing. This must be very acutely done because, even though I haven't seen it since broadcast, I do find that I can remember everything that happens or gets said in this programme. My response this second time around is wry appreciation rather than very much in the way of active laughter, though.

 It is very good at capturing the way that certain blokey men with popular cultural interests of that generation talk to each other, in deliberately clever, allusive, catchphrasey language, and the cusp within that sort of speech between what they say being either really impressive or really irritating to listen to.