This Life

There could have been no duller a subject to touch than young Solicitors and their shared house in Southwark. However, the reality was a unique snapshot of two years in the life of drug-taking, hyper-sexed twenty-somethings.

The only downside to the two series', was that they never made a third.

This has just finished a repeat of the whole series in the UK, being shown late every week night during the summer. It is amazing it was first shown nearly five years ago and has been finished over three years now. This has brilliant and believable scripts, tight storylines told with economy, all played with great panache.

Nearly every actor has gone on to better things, if there could be anything better than this, Jack Davenport to Hollywood films, Daniela Nardini into several very good homegrown dramas and Andrew Lincoln does the voiceovers for about 50% of British ads.

The final episode has to be the most satisfying piece of television ever and the final scene of that episode made it into the top 100 TV moments of the Millennium as voted by the UK's Channel 4 viewers.

As a piece of British life in the mid-Nineties it will probably become an icon of the period. As a lawyer myself, the legal scenes were spot on, as befits the author's origins. They left this at the top, and rightly so as anywhere from that final scene would have been down hill.

I still hold firmly to the belief that the last episode of this landmark show is the best 40 mins of British TV drama ever. Any number of storylines coming sharply to a head, the terrific wedding reception with its toilet sex and terrible dancing, darkest secrets coming horrifyingly to light and the legendary punch. But how sad! If we'd known then that there would never be another series we would have stormed the BBC ourselves. But think positive. The show is endlessly rewatchable, and its influence has lived on in Queer as Folk, Attachments, Teachers, Metropolis, Tinsel Town and most contemporary drama since.

Just please, please publish the damn scripts!

A near-perfect study of life's transitional period between careless partying and responsible adulthood, this addictive British series touches a nerve with anyone who's waged that cumbersome battle. The absorbing characters and first-rate acting draw the viewer in until you feel like you want to jump into the fray yourself. Don't miss this on BBC America.

This is one of the most addictive, amusing and involving TV

series I have yet seen. It has a kind of cultish appeal, and I

know a lot of people who follow it closely and discuss each

weekly installment as if it was real life. That's the key I

think. This series is based in reality. A group of very

different personalities share a house in South London and the 2

year story shows their growing relationships and their

interraction with various friends and colleagues mainly in the

legal profession. It's fairly graphic stuff with sex in

various forms, nudity, bad language and drug use presented in a

very matter of fact way. The characters are believable and

appealing despite the warts and all presentation, and the lines

are often bitingly clever. Daniela Nardini as Anna gets the

best lines by far, delivered in a wonderful Scottish brogue for

maximum effect. All good things must come to an end however and

the series concludes with the happy group disintegrating after a

massive row. But it was good while it lasted. What a

stunning, intelligent and