Since this hasn't been reviewed here yet, I thought I'd put something up, although it is not very positive. I had never seen or even heard of Let There Be Love until recently, and was tempted to watch it because it stars Paul Eddington as the central character, Timothy Love. Eddington of course featured prominently in two of the iconic sitcoms of this period, The Good Life (1975-1978) and Yes Minister (1980-1984).
Let There Be Love, which aired over two seasons of six episodes each in 1982-1983, is simply not in the same league, and disappoints not just in comparison but in its own right. The basic theme is that Timothy, a middle-aged bachelor who has, until now, enjoyed a life of womanizing, meets and falls in love with widow Judy (Nanette Newman), marrying her and in the process 'taking on' her three children.
Unfortunately, there just isn't enough comedy potential in this premise or, if there is, the script by the often-successful writing duo of Brian Cooke and Johnnie Mortimer fails to find it. The problem seems to me to be that there is no real tension between any of the characters of the sort (whether derived from personality, or class, or gender, or whatever) which seems to be the hallmark of just about every successful sitcom.
Eddington does his usual excellent best with the material he is given, but the fact is that he is miscast as a one-time playboy. Newman has even less to work with. As for the side-pairing of Dennis Newberry (Henry McGee) and his wife Louise (Peggy Sinclair) as an unhappily warring couple, it is so tired and cliched as to be almost embarrassing, although McGee does have a few decent one-liners. An additional problem is that the child actors, though competent enough, are a bit too wooden to be able to deliver the kind of timing a sitcom needs. Perhaps it would have worked better, from both a dramatic and a casting point of view, to have made the children older, which could have generated the kind of tensions, and the kind of performances, from the children in, say, Butterflies (1978-1983) which was also running at this time.
Overall, it's not terrible. It's watchable enough, and it has a certain cosy charm (which can be a good thing, and in some cases, for example As Time Goes By, can deliver excellent comedy along the way). There is also a nice portrayal of Judy's father from the ever-lugubrious John Welsh which is dryly humorous. But, especially given there were so many other fine sitcoms at the time, it is perhaps not surprising that it is little-remembered now.
