Romance never dies. Sam (Andrew Lincoln) and Baggy (Andrew Rajan) share a house in London play cricket visit the pub and watch porn. It's not much of a life but it's better than coal mining. Sam secretly wants to be a singer and has a deeper interest in his friend Alison than he's willing to admit. Baggy? He's never been able to trust a girl since his fiance jilted him at the altar - besides married women seem safer. Of course commitment is a lot harder than smoking a
All the world's a stage for a wannabe actor who's always playing the fool! John Gordon Sinclair is Robert, an aspiring actor willing to do anything for that elusive big break. But with his agent signing him up as a stuntman, he is more likely to break his neck. Meanwhile his girlfriend has to wait in the wings Certain that it's only a matter of time before he makes it, struggling actor Robert throws himself into every role, taking break a leg' a bit too literally! Fiancée Sue (Gina McKee, Notting Hill) is always on hand to support and encourage him,whilst his less-than-capable agent Desmond (Victor Spinetti, A Hard Day's Night) desperately tries to flog his talent unsuccessfully. Adapted with much skill from the radio show and given added depth and humour The Scotsman
Micawber was ITV's big weapon in the Christmas 2001 television ratings war. With its gritty recreation of Dickensian London and David Jason--a name guaranteed to attract viewers regardless of the programme--in the title role it certainly had all the hallmarks of blockbusting television drama. Jason is certainly a fine Micawber, wringing every ounce of pathos and relentless optimism from one of Dickens' most well loved characters. And he is ably abetted by Annabelle Apsion as his put-upon wife who stands by him through thick and thin and who "never will desert him". The trouble is that if you're going to lift a familiar fictional character out of his original context and give him a whole new life and set of adventures, they really have to match or improve on the original. And Micawber has already been through so much during the course of David Copperfield that stretching him across four episodes and a plot which can only really offer a series of variations on the original theme doesn't give much room for development or dramatic impact. In the writer's corner, Jason's long-term collaborator John Sullivan (creator of Only Fools and Horses) makes a valiant attempt to generate some authentic Dickensian atmosphere. Touches of authentic Victoriana abound in the backstage theatre scenes, a dancing bear, the pawn shop and the highly imaginative flashbacks to the source of Micawber's straightened state. The script tends to combine gritty costume drama with modern comedy in an occasionally uneasy mixture; sometimes we see the ghosts of Del Boy or Pa Larkin rather than Dickens' hapless, pathetic but great-hearted victim of circumstance. But fans of Jason won't complain and there's enough soul in the story to make it compelling. --Piers Ford
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