This Life Less Ordinary
The return of the seminal mid-90s This Life gang for a one-off special ten years on from the original series lured an average of 3.2 million adult viewers to BBC One last night, giving the channel a 14.2% audience share at the time.
The once influential drama, set around a group of 20-somethings living together in London, was in its day a groundbreaking character-driven programme that became a cult phenomenon at the height of New Labour.
Last night’s airing of the long-awaited finale of sorts has been much hyped, promising a glimpse into the grownup worlds of Millie, Egg, Miles, Warren and Anna. However, the end result felt somewhat staged, as the group reunites due to Egg’s successful novel based on his friends and their experiences from ten years ago.
The friends come together to stage a reunion at Miles’ large country estate, to be filmed for a documentary about the characters that Egg’s hit novel is based upon.
The monologues to camera, the fly-on-the-wall nature of the documentary that’s being filmed and the obvious nod to the way television has changed to become “reality” focused, all manage to unravel the events that have shaped the character’s lives whilst they’ve been away from our screens. However, it’s almost as though this is a somewhat lazy way of filling in the blanks.
It’s comforting to see the ‘old friends’ of the original This Life, even if it is disappointingly only for one night. Essentially the characters have remained pretty much the same, having grown up only slightly. “Filming a bunch of f*cked up metrosexuals is not how I intended to spend my life,” shouts Claire, the young filmmaker that has been following the group, as Egg makes a grand gesture to Millie by throwing the tapes into the lake.
The programme crammed almost too much information into its hour-and-a-half slot and ended up at points feeling contrived. The scene where the friends have a garden barbecue, dancing around to mid-90s indie anthems, was skin crawlingly awkward, whilst there were moments between Anna and Miles as they discussed their complicated relationship that did feel truly believable and moving.
There’s no solid conclusion however, which could leave open a further return of the thirty-something crew. However, as enjoyable as it was to catch up with them after all this time, the show didn’t totally hit the mark. Perhaps sleeping dogs would have been best left to lie and the developing lives of these once loved characters best left to the imagination of the show’s fans.
The start of the new series of Just The Two of Us on BBC One managed to pull in far more viewers last night than BBC One did for the This Life update. The singing contest, which pairs eight professional singers with eight celebrities to sing live duets in front of a judging panel, managed to net an average of almost five million adult viewers in the timeslot (a 21.4% viewing share), whilst its results programme on between 10.30pm and 11pm, drew in 3.7 million (22.6%).
All The Best From Denis Norden, an outdated blooper style clip show on ITV1, also managed to gain more adult viewers than This Life + 10, taking 3.4 million or a 15% audience share at the time. Meanwhile, Five’s CSI Miami pulled in an impressive three million on average, giving the broadcaster a 13% viewing share in the timeslot.
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