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.