On the Up

There are BBC comedies from the Nineties one can watch a thousand times and not get tired (AbFab, Keeping Up Appearances). This is not one of them. The cast is reasonably talented and some of the dialog did give me a chuckle or two. But as soon as I'm done with the DVD box set, I'm giving it away. Perhaps the premise of "self-made millionaire's domestics have it in for his posh wife" was meant to be a post-Thatcher take on Upstairs, Downstairs. But it just isn't engaging enough. Worse, as viewers we not only never quite suspend our disbelief - we can practically see the scriptwriting team racking their brains, trying to create drama out of the most trivial of situations. Whatever has been done or said in the plot, everyone is constantly up in arms - discussing the implications till the cows come home. And by "everyone" I mean everyone - grandma, daughter who's back from boarding school, daughter's classmate's mother and several folksy characters who end their sentences with "...innit?". I could understand if these were seasons 23 and 24 of an endless soap. But they're not.