Love Soup

If you like droll and witty, you'll love this. If low brow, slutty, British sit com fare is your style, this is definitely not for you. First of all it's very smart stuff. Secondly the script is handled very deftly by almost everyone connected with it. Kudos to the director! Tamsin Grieg has a face built for comedy, a sort of sexier Lily Tomlin, and her timing is exquisite! The American (a real one, for a change) is excellent as well, if a tad too good looking for a lonely single.

The two play a couple, possibly (hopefully) destined to meet, but in the mean time they passively, reluctantly, pursue the dating game. Each episode is another disaster waiting to happen. Sometimes you can see it coming other times you can't, but you know it's coming. Just what will make this one a disaster?

My favorite scene, so far, is when the parents of Tamsin's ex boyfriend of some 10 years, show up to tell her he's passed away and to hand over tapes he made of him and Tamsin having sex. The old couple play it absolutely straight and innocently, and Tamsin's facial expressions show her skills as a comedian, who knows how to be subtle, instead of obvious.

My wife is impatient to have the two meet, but I want to wait and savor the moment, when (if) it comes.

I had looked forward to this based on loving both One Foot In The Grave and Tamsin Greig in Black Books, and I wasn't disappointed. The two main characters are, in many ways, younger, softer versions of Victor Meldrew and they suffer all the petty indignities that modern life can throw at us such as, and this had me laughing from the opening minutes until a good five minutes into the first episode, plastic ring-pulls on milk cartons which don't work. Cut to the next shot of Alice with a bandaged finger and you have the style of the programme right there- don't show the moment of agony, just let the audience work it out. The main actors are great but what I really enjoyed was how good the incidental characters were; the nurse with her low-key words of wisdom on finding a mate and marrying them was beautifully understated, and the estate-agent's comment that the living-room "is...15'3" because there are no other distinguishing features is just so subtle and so perfect: just like the rest of the show.

Love soup is screening for the first time in New Zealand (Feb 2007). In a country where television is increasingly dominated by (mainly) brain dead American trash, I am heartened that some enlightened buyer has purchased a program that appeals to people with a brain. I would not describe it as a comedy perse. The humour is subtle and not obvious to anyone who has not been "through the traps". My fascination is due to usually being totally wrong when trying to predict what happens next. I mean how many girls do you come across with a full body tattoo? Like many well written works, the series touches on many of the taboos that we all eventually experience to some degree or other.

A wry and enjoyable programme and unlike bob from America, Gil's dialogue doesn't bother me as I am British and this is a British programme for British people. I don't like the way American writers write dialogue for British characters in American programmes, as it is not an accurate portrayal of the way we use our language, but I understand that they are writing for an American audience and not trying to portray an accurate representation of our way of speaking.

The idea that two people are the ideal partners for each other but are completely unaware of each other and to tell their story in this way is intriguing. I understand that it is inspired by how the writer met his own wife. Will they get together? I hope we get to find out.

Alice and Gil independently wander through life wondering if there is anyone else on the planet who 'get' them...

This is a beautifully observed, hilariously acted set of 6 hour-long episodes, posing the question 'is there really a perfect partner for each of us, and if so, how do we meet them?'. Renwick creates one cringingly funny situation after another, and he is ably served by Tamsin Greig and Michael Landes as Alice and Gil. Greig is particularly wonderful, underplaying brilliantly in the face of one embarrassment after another. Smith and Lombard are also fantastic as Alice's colleagues, and Styler is a revelation as Gil's frustrated neighbour Irene. Occasionally 60 minutes feels a little long, but on the whole an unmissable show. Role on Season 2?