Please come back
Simon Hoggart
Cold Feet (ITV) finally ended and will probably not come back, though I must ask that, contrary to the received wisdom, it should. I loved it. The last episode was awash with tears for the dead Rachel, crushed to death in her car as she looked at a cassette to slot in. You somehow knew it was Dire Straits, or possibly Phil Collins, who took her to her doom.
I wasn't as sorry about poor old Rachel as I should have been. It was one of those deaths which makes you think, 'Oh, her poor baby boy,' rather than 'Goodness, how we'll miss her.' I'm sure Helen Baxendale is a lovely person, but she always seems to play fraught, snippy women who make people ill at ease. No wonder Ross abandoned her for the other Rachel in Friends; at least Jennifer Aniston makes you think that, while sex might not be her first interest, it's definitely in the top three. Helen Baxendale gives the impression she's more worried about being sure the last person in the bath cleaned it properly. Her ghost, or at least her husband's memory of her, kept cropping up in the last episode — there to remind us why we didn't really like her much.
But she was a strong woman. All the women in Cold Feet were strong, though all were flawed in one way or another. In this it resembled real life. What didn't resemble real life was the setting. Originally this was to have been north London, but they felt that contained negative resonances, so it was set in a more neutral provincial city, Manchester. Or rather, carefully selected parts of Manchester. The fabled city on the Irwell contained no litter-strewn streets, boarded-up shops, sink estates or ribbon developments. It was all scrubbed brick pavements by sparkling canals, cool and airy bars, chic restaurants, plant-festooned atria, loft conversions, minimalist offices, and this week a tree-lined colonnade. Much of the show's powerful appeal came from placing ordinary people in this demiparadise, this jewel set in a slag-heap'd sea, this Manchester.
Most successful soap operas — and a high-grade soap is what this was — depend on putting folk you know into settings you don't. It will be sorely missed, not least for its good jokes (Rachel's ashes being scattered by accident all over town, and Jacey Sales as Ramona, the sexy but scary, utterly over-the-top Spanish nanny.) Of course it could easily come back. You might as well argue that Coronation Street has reached the end of its natural life. Some of us would be quite happy to grow older along with Cold Feet.
The wild-eyed, wide-bosomed Jacey turned up as a dancing instructor on My Family (BBCI). the surprise hit sitcom which returned this week and which stars two A-grade actors, Robert Lindsay and Zoe Wanamaker. It's rather old-fashioned, a British Life Of Riley or Leave Jr To Beaver, shows which gave Americans a cosy glow in the 1950s. Or The Good Life without the pretentious pair next door. For all the talk of drugs and sex, there's a charming innocence about it. 'Bang goes my casserole!' someone says, or this bedtime exchange: 'You smell like a dentist's surgery.' 'You do say the sweetest things!' When the studious teenage son decides to cut out red food to reduce his libido, his mother asks, 'Why can't he collect stamps, like other boys?'
Bless. Few boys collect stamps nowadays. It's a line from the past, as warm and reassuring as those diamond-patterned sweaters which are mysteriously fashionable again. The jokes in My Family aren't funny. They're not meant to be. They're there to remind you of your youth, and they do it very well.
The documentary A Night Out With The Girls (ITV) was hilarious. It should have had a solemn warning at the start. 'Viewers of a nervous disposition may find some of the scenes disturbing.' Not the endless shots of drunken young women pulling their tops up, for why else would you watch the show in the first place? No, the scary part was all these doctors and psychologists explaining how drinking a dozen alcopops plus eight Pernods can make you act honkers and kill you too. A particularly joyless liver doctor told us that his organ of choice doesn't warn you when it's about to pack in. You can be coasting along quite happily, having your 11th pint, then, bang, you're on the phone to George Best pleading to have his old one.
But the doomy doctor didn't get long on screen, dear me, no. Soon we were back with young women mugging at the camera, squeezing their boobs out of their bra like toothpaste, rubbing themselves up against tanned, long-haired male strippers. They were the quintessential opposite of Helen Baxendale. It was like merging Jeremy Clarkson with Casualty. 'Yes, driving this four-litre baby down the motorway at 105 is as cool as you can get! But be warned, serious skull fractures can lead to death or permanent brain damage. Your choice!'
What Was The Nation's Favourite Food (BBC1) all about? Someone had done a poll on our most popular comfort food. It was topped by chocolate. Celebrity chefs lined up to say that they loved comfort food, when we know that's a lie. Does Gordon Ramsey serve fruit crumble, or tea and toast? Following the absurd results in their Greatest Briton poll, the Beeb can only count themselves lucky they didn't find chicken's feet and sheep's eyes in the food top ten.
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