![]() ![]() They do things differently there.Goodnight Sweetheart is a British science fiction time travel sitcom, starring Nicholas Lyndhurst, created by Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran, and produced by the BBC. But looking back, the most jarring moment came in the form of an unfortunate series five cameo by Rolf Harris, which just goes to show that the past really is a foreign country. That separation was the crux around which the show’s dramatic tension was built, and after they met it was never the same again.įrom that moment, the show’s precarious premise broke down entirely and descended into cartoonish cliche, with episodes involving evil Gary replicants, time-portal repair engineers and Jack the Ripper who, it turns out, was never caught because he was run over by a bus in 1999. And, despite some bizarre moments such as Gary inexplicably running into Captain Mainwaring and Sergeant Wilson in a bank in 1941 and recognising them as such, the show did not truly jump the shark until the third episode of series five, when Yvonne and Phoebe met. ![]() Throughout the series, Gary takes credit for almost every hit written by everyone between George Formby and George Michael. It also seems to have inspired the pleasing premise for Richard Curtis and Danny Boyle’s latest film Yesterday. And Goodnight Sweetheart did, for a while.Īt the start it was a compelling and funny – if now dated – comment on male insecurity and modern life. It’s an outlandish premise, but once such a high concept is established, so long as its world remains consistent, it can hold together. And so begins his long and, frankly, shameful career as the world’s most audacious love rat, who has to contend with unhappy wives, the Luftwaffe (what’s the bloody difference, eh Gary? Amirite?), a hapless best friend and the paradoxes of time travel. This person is Phoebe, a pub landlord’s daughter, who becomes Gary’s other wife. He then does what any of us would do if we’d just discovered the secret of time travel, and shags the first person he sees. Luckily, he discovers that he can leave this hellish peace and equality behind and travel back to the more exciting East End of the early 40s, where men were men and innocent people died by the thousand. In it, Gary is a man behaving boringly who is unsure about his role in this confusing modern world where women like his wife Yvonne have the temerity to study psychology instead of cook his dinner. Gary, played by the affable Nicholas Lyndhurst, was the protagonist of Goodnight Sweetheart, one of the most successful sitcoms of that halcyon decade. So it was perhaps inevitable that into this comfortable stupor popped Gary Sparrow, a time-travelling bigamist TV repair engineer from Cricklewood. The only real worry was whether you preferred Blur or Oasis. In 1992, the political scientist Francis Fukuyama went so far as to publish a book called The End of History and the Last Man arguing that the triumph of liberal democracy marked a new age of stable government and sunlit uplands. It really did seem as though things could only get better. Tony Blair was a god, Donald Trump was a joke and the world felt hopeful.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |