Rescue Me

I still remember watching this - I don't think I can say that about many things from so long ago. It practically kept me going when I was having to do the lounge decorating!

It's witty, it's unpredictable, and Sally Phillips is beautiful. The mediocre old days of Smack The Pony over, her comic talent is free here to shine, and shine it does. Piquant character comedy is the best part of this series, though it has a genuinely funny 'sitcom' aspect as well; but think an ironic version of Bridget Jones, rather than Fawlty Towers.

The plot is nothing that marvellous, but it's not the main thing here; again we're talking about Bridget Jones fare here, though it is cleverer in the literary allusions, as I seem to recall. The whole thing has a lot more irony. And it does, at any rate, defy any attempt to predict from the start what is going to happen, so the whole thing stays very watchable because of that.

I know this has been said by someone else, but I really also remember that bit when she goes to see the Germaine Greer-type woman and says she's doing a feature on "What's In Your Fridge?"! It still makes me smile to think of it now.

I'd recommend this wholeheartedly to anyone on this earth, except that of course there's no way to actually get hold of the damn thing. I've been waiting from that day to this for them to release the DVD but to my knowledge it's never even been repeated. The BBC should have a better system by now; if releasing DVDs is so expensive, they could just charge people for downloading it surely.