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This came out the year before I was born, so obviously I am working from an ancient copy of the show long before my time. Monty Python's Flying Circus also came out in 1969, and casts a long shadow to this day. Meanwhile on the other side of the Atlantic a completely different team was also trying something completely different, with less success.

This show is notorious for having been cancelled after one episode was transmitted - indeed, that's how I came to learn of it. I don't think it's that bad, but then fifty years later I can't really imagine how 30 minutes almost entirely devoted to sex jokes would have been seen, even in the Swinging Sixties. Some of the gags fell flat, but some were at least amusing. The worst thing about it was the constant noodling on a Moog synthesiser, which was very "up to date" at the time but just acted as a distraction. What would have come next we will never know. Apparently another episode was filmed, and the Wikipedia quotes Maura McGiveny as saying five shows were filmed and twenty-one planned. If they were going to stick to sex jokes for twenty-one half-hour shows, the joke would certainly have worn thin long before they stopped. I hope they had some other ideas for episode 2. Nonetheless, if I could find it, I'd at least give it a try.

Much as I detest Mrs Thatcher (Prime Minister of Britain 1979-90, for the young and the foreign), her maxim applies here. It was obvious throughout this series, of which I saw all but the first and last episodes, that money had been poured into it. There was lots of location work, the sets were big and elaborate, the costumes were beautiful, there was a large cast, people had been trained to fight, there were lots of special effects, and so on. The trouble was, though, that the ideas weren't there beneath it all. The characters were dull (a magician who can't actually use magic is a completely pointless idea) and the story didn't make much sense to me. It was fun to watch Matt Lucas having the time of his life overacting the villain, but I lost patience with the story as a whole and that is why I never watched part 6. As others have said, India de Beaufort is gloriously beautiful, but that isn't enough to keep my interest.

Like the previous commentator, I saw this programme when BBC4 presented it as part of their Iceland season. The first couple of episodes I liked, but I was a bit lost. Once I got to know the characters, though, I loved it more and more. The characters are beautifully drawn and magnificently played: you don't think of it as acting, you feel you're seeing a window into someone's life. I also thought Daníel should have paid more attention to Ylfa, starting with telling her she looked nice in episode 11, but life isn't perfect. Ólafur, for me, is the finest achievement: on the one hand, he's the perpetual underdog, so that you can't help feeling sorry for him, but on the other hand, he is forever doing something stupid. My favourite episode is the eleventh, where Georg tries to teach his embarrassed and uninterested pubescent son the Facts of Life with the help of a copy of Hustler ("The man has a penis, the woman doesn't have a penis. Well, that one does, but she's deformed.") and a white-board for vocabulary and diagrams. I was quite relieved when that one was over, because I was laughing so much it hurt. I shall certainly buy the DVD, which I am pleased to find is available with English subtitles.