This (was never my) Life

Look, it’s time for some hon­esty. I’m too long in the tooth to be proud, too far gone to be con­cerned with attempt­ing to be cooler than cool. So I don’t mind admit­ting that tonight — in a move echoed across the land by, I sus­pect, most people of my gen­er­a­tion — I will be avidly watch­ing the reunion of those go-getting young law­yers from This Life after a dec­ade apart.

I have no doubt that it will be just like reliv­ing the heady days of the late ‘90s — care­free sex, mild drug-taking and rock ‘n’ roll (though more often it was that Portishead CD and a lot of ano­dyne trip-hop play­ing inof­fens­ively in the back­ground). Not for­get­ting, of course, the jerky, in-your-face cam­era angles that made it feel like you were right there in the room with the char­ac­ters. Or suf­fer­ing a severe bout of sea­sick­ness. One or the other.

None of those ele­ments com­prised my per­sonal exper­i­ence of the era, you under­stand. Back in the late ‘90s, my ver­sion of This Life fea­tured pre­cious little sex, just the one dis­astrously destruct­ive rela­tion­ship and very occa­sional puffs of suspicious-smelling roll-ups — all played out to a soundtrack of obscure, doom-laden indie bands. And without a cam­era in sight. But that’s why I enjoyed the series: escap­ism and life­style wish ful­fill­ment equals A Good Thing. Plus, I got a free sixty-minute guilt trip each week, because I could sit in front of the tele­vi­sion and nurse a sense of vague regret at not hav­ing heeded my mother’s sug­ges­tion that I should fol­low other mem­bers of her fam­ily into a law career. Were bar­ris­ters and junior soli­cit­ors really get­ting that much, that often, and with that many dif­fer­ent sexual part­ners? Damn.

I have good reason for men­tion­ing This Life now, before the pro­gramme has even been broad­cast, because once the clos­ing cred­its have rolled I shall either be laugh­ing at the hil­ar­ity of the whole thing, won­der­ing what I ever liked about the show in the first place, or I shall be silently weep­ing over the lost prom­ise of my youth. Well, my sort-of youth — after all, I was already twenty-five or twenty-six years old when the second and final series aired in 1997. Either way, whatever the out­come, you won’t be hear­ing a word from me, because I’m not about to give away any clues as to what a waste of time I think my life over the past dec­ade has been. I’m not going to com­pare my path through my late twen­ties and early thirties with the achieve­ments of Egg, War­ren, Anna and the rest.

The only con­sol­a­tion I have, in advance of being glued to the TV tonight, is that whilst the major­ity of the cast seem to still be look­ing sick­en­ingly healthy and have not aged as much in ten years as I have, the same can­not be said of Miles (Jack Dav­en­port) and Milly (Amita Dhiri). The former seems to have been indul­ging in rather too many bottles of cheap red wine, hence his florid and slightly sweaty com­plex­ion. Heaven knows what’s happened to his hair too, but he appears to be have been sleep­ing on a bench in Leicester Square if the frightwig he’s sport­ing in the pub­li­city shot is any­thing to go by. And then there’s the dread­ful, dread­ful knit­wear. Mean­while, Milly’s face seems to have sunk to the con­sist­ency of a prune.

There is some real­ism in this escap­ist world of formerly fash­ion­able TV drama, then. Thank you, God. Thank you.

A final thought: let the fate of Miles and Milly act as a sober­ing warn­ing to those of you cur­rently lux­uri­at­ing in the giddy tumult of your mid to late twen­ties. Some­thing hap­pens to the muscles in your face when you reach the age of thirty-four. Some­thing wor­ry­ing. It starts on the very morn­ing of your thirty-fourth birth­day, in fact. It’s as if all those youth­ful muscles sud­denly lose the will to tighten and stay together in one sleek form. Your face spreads and sags. It hap­pens to the best of us, so my advice is to get as much care­free sex and drug-taking while you can. And make sure you’ve stud­ied law beforehand.

The only other good news? They killed off Ferdy (Ramon Tikaram) — pre­sum­ably on the basis that whilst, yes, he did have that lovely, long black hair and wore biker’s leather gear, he was also reg­u­larly acted off screen by vari­ous items of house­hold furniture.

Tonight, I feel very old. And I’m sure I can hear my bones creak­ing. Still, no time to waste. Not at my age. I’ve got to get myself a bottle of red plonk — well, maybe just a nice mug of tea so I don’t have one of those nasty hangovers in the morn­ing — and put on that Portishead album before the open­ing titles start to roll and the jangling indie theme tune kicks in.

The morn­ing after: I have only three things to say about last night’s pro­gramme. First, one hour and twenty minutes seemed far too long. Second, I don’t know if Amy Jen­kins was always that bad, or whether it’s just the case that in the past ten years she has some­how gained the dubi­ous tal­ent of not being able to write for tof­fee. And third, that plot device of a film-maker record­ing a doc­u­ment­ary about the reunion was just pain­fully clumsy. Pain­ful. And clumsy. That is all.