After You've Gone

I only saw the second episode but I enjoyed Nicholas Lyndhurst who played the father and the wonderful Celia Imrie playing his mother-in-law Diana Neal, who is also grandmother to Alex and Molly, teen grandchildren. I missed the first episode so I don't know where the mother went. In the episode I caught, Lyndhurst invites his mother-in-law out to dinner to one of her favorite expensive restaurants while the kids have a party. Alex and Molly want to have a party but it's Grandma who might spoil it and not their father who appears liberal. It's Grandma Diana that comes across as the one feared in this sitcom. At the dinner, her son-in-law learns that Diana may not be that simply. Anyway, the episode was okay and I like family sitcoms and wished that there were more of them on television.

Please understand that I write this following the broadcast of the first show in this new series from the pen of Fred Baron, the Americal behind My Family.

I really love the casting of Nicholas Lyndhurst and Celia Imrie as the ex-husband and mother of a woman who wants to go off to Africa to "help the poor." They, along with the rest of the well- cast cast do a great job with the material. The writing is clean and the comedy comes from the actual "situations," hence the term situation comedy. Not, unlike far too many programs, from forced innuendo, double entrendre, and other fancy words for "if it really isn't funny, make it smutty!"

Shot in front of a live audience, the laughs come in realistic amounts and at the correct times. I'm going to enjoy watching this one develop over the next several weeks.

I think I like this strictly for nolstagic reasons but at the time I do remember liking it then too. I found the characters and scenarios really funny like when the father son were stranded in fancy dress clothes on the streets and an old lady burglar attacking the fathers gormless builder assistant. The acting was good except Dani Harmer who plays the daughter who was really miscast in this. Let's face it, apart from Tracey Beaker, she can't do anything else. I'd say this was very good especially compared to the rubbish comedy shows now.

I really wanted to like this, but I just feel they have made the character of Diana (Celia Imrie) too unlikeable. She has been written as one of those that must try to put everyone down every time she opens her mouth.

After a short time I found myself hating the woman. This is written by the same guy who wrote my family, another comedy I found too uncomfortable. You have to make characters believable.

I believe this is one of the main differences between an American and European comedy, the Americans try to cram gags in where as the Europeans tend to build up a plot and a fall. This is of course an American writer.

In the great scheme it is not so important, many sit-comes come and go, this one will, in my opinion just go.

This sitcom never really caught on in the same way that My Family did but is still worth watching. After you've gone does not try to be contemporary or cutting edge it just tries to be a traditional family sitcom and achieves this aim.

Nicholas Lyndhurst and Ceilia Emrie both are very good in their roles and as the show progresses young Ryan Sampson begins to steal the show as the son Alex.

This show has some good lines in it and the story lines are always strong. Sadly this was axed in 2008 just as it seemed to be hitting it's stride meaning that we'll never see a finale for the series.