After You've Gone

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.

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 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.

The series is entertaining, witty, and providing sharp, rember-able humour. The premise is kind of dramatic, so on rewatching it requires to be set aside, to fully enjoy the comedy - a former alcoholic, now divorced, moves back in with his teenager kids, to jointly look after them with his mother in law, because his ex wife went to Africa to practice medicine (and explore a new relationship with a colleague that is everything Jimmy never was). The kids are great, at sneaking around and scheming all sorts of things. Snappy, epic dialogues involving them. Celia Imrie as the stuck up professor and mother in law is quite a thing, but she has affectionate undertones, too. Comfy house, amusing stories, only downside, as mentioned, the personal issues of the father, now a striving repairman with a new girlfriend, a bartender whom he partially neglects. Best characters: the son (so far the best role that actor ever got), and the stingy mother in law. Good afternoon show.