This Life

This Life is one of the best drama series yet produced by the BBC.

It follows the lives of 5 housemates who share a South London town house and never once holds back in terms of sex, language, nudity or attitude. Its candour was the main reason why it was so popular as unlike some sugar coated, problem-resolved-in-an-hour soap-operas it showed life as it really is.

This Life only lasted for two series, but could have easily continued. Only the powers-that-be at the BBC know why a third series was never commissioned, but to many it was a loss to British TV.

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.

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!

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.

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.