Vicious

It would be such a shame if this show did not continue- there have been quite a few critical reviews and so I am writing to try to even the balance. In this stressful world, it is vital to find ways to lighten the gloom. Vicious provides quality of a kind that just does not come around every day. We just need more episodes! We have found this series to be full of entertainment, laughs, tenderness and, a really high quality addition to to our lives. We have enjoyed the main actors performances in other shows on stage and screen and now we have an extra dimension There is nothing to fault and everything to hope for in terms of subsequent series.

I give this an 11/10 because it was so much more entertaining to me than most shows I watch. I laughed a lot in every single episode and loved all of them by the end (which seems bizarre at the start, but really it's inevitable by the end).

The show takes stereotypical things and people and plays them very well, turning them into characters that I'd love to see come back for another season. It is original in that its main characters are almost all 70+, and that the main two are gay men, but they're all played as people who happen to be those things, not totally defined by them.

If you don't have the necessary sense of humor, you will be confused and/or offended by the show. But if you understand it, it's incredibly funny, relevant, and you'll see that the people are all very loving with each other (in a crazy way).

It doesn't have a massively dynamic, ever-changing cast of characters with deep plots - it's about two people living their very ordinary lives together. They do it so well that it makes it extraordinary for me.

So, I recommend this and I hope you give it a chance or three.

Sir Ian McKellen and Derek Jacobi star in "Vicious," also starring Frances de la Tour.

McKellen and Jacobi play, for want of a better term, two old queens, and de la Tour plays their upstairs neighbor Violet. McKellen's character, Freddie, was an actor with so-so success who talks about his fan mail ("You only had one fan," Stuart (Jacobi) reminds him. "Yes, but he wrote a lot of letters," Freddie says.) In the episode I saw, the two were mourning, if that's the right word, the death of an old friend who apparently had been the lover of Freddie at one time, though he also managed to have two wives and six children. "Wasn't there a wife?" Penelope (Marcia Warren) asks. "Oh, yes," Stuart says, "but that was only for 19 years." Basically, it's the two guys throwing insults at one another and having a bad reaction when someone opens the curtains and lets in the light. The one-liners for the most part are very funny, delivered by two great actors who are obviously enjoying themselves camping it up.

I have to say I found it quite enjoyable, funny, and on a higher level than some of the comedies on TV today.

After reading the hyper-sensitive and depressed reviews of this show, I was expecting to hate it, but I decided to give it a chance for Ian McKellan.

I'm glad I did. It is laugh-out-loud funny.

Unfortunately, it seems we're only getting six episodes this year (until Christmas). I wanted it to continue, because each episode seems to be better than the one before.

I haven't seen the shows that others are comparing it to, so it is fresh for me. Maybe you have to know a few couples like Freddie and Stuart for it to make sense. They are in no way out of date or homophobic.

Violet is also a character for our times. And who doesn't have a Penelope in their life?

Ash fills out the ... uh, yes, cast. His optimism is a great contrast to the rest of the jaded characters.

I went into this one without any idea of what I was in for. I had some time to kill and found this on my DVR so I decided to check it out. I'm the kind of person that will watch nearly anything at least once even if I have no idea what the show is about or who's in it. I put it on without bothering to read the info and was shocked right away to see Sir Ian McKellan's name on the cast list. I love this man. I have never seen him in anything I haven't loved. Then the show started and I found myself wondering what the heck I was about to watch and how the heck it ended up on my DVR. By the end of the first episode, I was madly in love with Vicious.

I get why people are having a hard time with this show. From the moment the first episode started, I wasn't entirely sure what I was watching. It isn't what one would expect to see on television these days. It's definitely hammy and over the top but I think that's what I liked about it most. It's ridiculous and I think the ridiculousness is what makes it so brilliant. All that out of the way, this is not a show everyone is going to love. If you want a well acted, thoughtful sitcom that pokes fun at life but still takes itself seriously in the end, you should skip Vicious. If you're looking for a bit of silly fun, definitely check it out.