Him & Her - End of Series Review

Friday 28th December 2012

I have something shameful to admit. I had never watched Him & Her before this series. I know – I’m embarrassed to even say it. I feel like everyone must have been pointing and giving me odd looks as I missed the first two series, like the time I walked all the way back from the library oblivious to the fact I was having a massive nosebleed.

When I did stumble across the first episode of series three, tucked away on BBC Three Sunday evenings in the shadow of Peep Show on the other side, I was absolutely hooked. Him & Her is without a doubt one of the best comedies on television right now, and I’m a little bit ashamed I wasn’t aware of it before.

If you’re unfamiliar with the show, it generally goes like this – we never leave the grotty flat of Becky and Steve, the couple played with complete believability and naturalism by Sarah Solemani and Russell Tovey. As they lounge round their flat they are interrupted each week without fail by the supporting cast, from odd neighbour Dan (Joe Wilkinson) to Becky’s sister Laura (Kerry Howard), probably the most brilliantly horrendous character on television. Often crude but always somehow lovely and charming, you’d think being stuck in the same flat with the same group each week would become repetitive, but rather each episode forms a beautifully crafted, perfectly observed half hour of comedy, usually with an undertone of some delicately touching drama, and carried off by superb performances from every single cast member.

The main plots that gently rumbled along through this series were Steve building up to proposing to Becky (done with the help of homemade Deal or No Deal boxes), a blossoming relationship between Dan and Shelley, and the unhappy union of the nightmarish Laura and her possibly gay fiancé Paul. Sunday night marked the end of the current series with a Christmas special, an occasion which doesn’t seem the most obvious to spend with the lazy couple, and indeed the episode opened with them in bed dipping turkey into mugs of gravy. Soon the guests descended, including Steve’s often absent dad, leading to a quietly heartfelt subplot playing out alongside the comedy provided by Laura arriving with a karaoke machine and a whistle, gifting everyone with Mothercare vouchers and reacting with barely concealed disdain when Shelley splashed out on an antique necklace for her.

It was another warm and at times surprisingly touching episode, just what I had come to expect - I may have only watched one series, but I already feel at home in Steve and Becky’s flat. Not that I’d be welcome there, of course; I’d get in the way of them watching TV.

Put simply, I can’t believe what I’ve been missing out on. If you made the same mistake as I did, it’s not too late to redeem yourself. Just quietly treat yourself to the DVD boxset, and we need never speak of this oversight again.

The Curious Case of BBC Three

 

Until a few weeks ago, the most I’d ever watched BBC Three was when it streamed Olympic sports over the summer. It was a channel that, with a few notable exceptions, I generally only resorted to if there was nothing else on and I couldn’t be bothered to pick up a book. But over the last month or so, something strange has happened. BBC Three has had a sudden surge of appointment television, of programmes that I would choose to watch, not just let wash over me because I can’t roll out of the dent I’ve made in the sofa (it’s been a long summer).

BBC Three’s remit states that it should provide “high-quality” programming that is “innovative” and utilises “new UK talent”. Maybe I have a selective memory or I’m being overly critical, but those certainly aren’t the words that would spring to mind if anyone asked me to describe the channel. Maybe I’ve just missed much of the good programming the channel has had in the past, or perhaps the fact that it is funded by the licence fee means that we will always expect more of BBC Three. Its rival E4, competing for the same age group, often seems to grab the big name US imports, which attract more attention than any misfires the channel might produce.

But recently on BBC Three there has been a glut of new, decent comedy, the likes of which the channel usually only likes to provide in sporadic episodes, often years apart, before coming to its senses and returning to its usual output of repeats and Greatest Movie Mistakes; see Little Britain, Gavin and Stacey, and Him and Her for examples, all of which, even if not to your personal taste, have garnered larger audiences and more critical praise than the usual BBC Three fare. The channel seems to be undergoing another comedy renaissance at the moment, producing a string of quality programmes that seem a cut above the normal channel output.

Jack Whitehall’s Bad Education was a strong sitcom debut that I found myself looking forward to every week, mainly due to the phenomenally talented young cast that populated the classroom. The show managed to produce a whole host of gifted young actors, certainly filling the “new UK talent” requirement.

Cuckoo, the channel’s latest comedy, is far from perfect, but driven by the ridiculously brilliant Andy Samberg, it has become compulsively watchable. The inclusion of Samberg seems to hint at the channel’s intent – an American comedy legend from The Lonely Island and Saturday Night Live, he is traditionally more likely to be found in a spoof music video with Justin Timberlake than fronting a BBC Three comedy.

The channel also aired what was perhaps my favourite new show of the summer, The Revolution Will Be Televised (although truthfully I can’t really remember what I was watching two and a half months ago at the beginning of the holiday). When I saw the trailer, it looked like a lazy prank show, featuring comedians handing out Jubilee merchandise to the public and chortling about how it’s cheap tat; obvious, and not particularly funny. But it turned out to be a brave, intelligent and most importantly hilarious show. Rather than being a mere exercise in cynicism, Revolution explained the cold hard facts behind some of the biggest scandals and injustices that are going on, and then combined this with hysterical public stunts – one of its stars was the guy who tried to give George Osborne a GCSE maths textbook. Unfortunately for everyone, Mr Osborne refused it.

Revolution was a genuinely excellent programme, the sort that feels so vital that you are relieved someone is making it. With output like this, BBC Three seems to be finally demonstrating its worth. Is this the start of rejuvenation in the channel? Or is it just another brief episode of brilliance before the channel suddenly remembers that John Humphrys hates it, is crippled by self-doubt and returns to being a bit naff? Who knows. But I will certainly now be more inclined to make time for new shows on the channel, even if they do rub up alongside Pop’s Greatest Dance Crazes.