Reunited was shown on Wednesday night at 9pm on BBC One.
In a rather gutsy move by the Beeb, Mike Bullen’s TV pilot Reunited was shown primetime on a Wednesday night in Summer against a two hour episode of Midsomer Murders. The show garnered 3.3 million viewers in it’s slot, narrowly beaten by ITV1‘s Midsomer Murders. However, the ratings for these two shows were the highest of the timeslot of the night.
Mike Bullen, writer of Cold Feet and Life Begins to name a few shows he’s still got it, providing us with a group of friends (who stink of middle class more than a Richard Curtis film) who lost touch when one friend cheated on another friend with their boyfriend who is in the group of friends. Confused? Don’t be, because the hour-long pilot was just like This Life crossed with Teachers, which was fitting as Navin Chowdhry‘s in it.
The above picture shows Hannah. There’s no other way to say it, but Hannah is a bit of a slag. However 8 years previous to the group meeting up again, Hannah slept with Ed Byrne. Well not literally but figuratively. Rob, played by Ed Byrne is a dirty dog, sleeping with plenty of women, subtly working drugs into casual conversation and hints upon a threesome at one point. Hannah is seen here post-coitus with her boss in Japan. Shortly after this scene, said bosses wife walks in yelling in Japanese before firing a gun. It was clear to me at this point that Hannah would have to leave Japan, which she does, upon reading a nearby newspaper. I sucessfully predicted Hannah’s disembarking of Japan. More on her later.
Add to the Middle Class cast the fact that the theme song is by Paul Weller and the scatterings of music throughout the episode and you basically have a 2010 reworking of Cold Feet. However I do have one concession, After Hours by We Are Scientists was featured somewhere in the middle of the episode, which pleased me no end. And fans of Florence + The Machine‘s cover of You Got the Love can enjoy it yet again in a drama and no doubt in the stings in between BBC programmes before and after the show.
The sevensome meet in what looks to be a ‘trendy’ London bar to catch up and yet again there seems to be no bones from Bullen in mentioning drugs. “Danny thought it was coke and tried to snort the evidence! hahahahahahahahahahaha”. I don’t mind references to drugs but this is really gratuitous and adds nothing to the plot whatsoever. What are we meant to take away from that as an audience? Is it suddenly okay to do coke if it’s part of an anecdote? I squirmed when I heard it cause up until that point I’d only had to persevere with a lady who acts as her Japanese boss’ mistress. Mary Whitehouse would turn in her grave.
Above is Martin. I think. I’m not quite sure, because he’s so predictably vacuous that I had no need to prick up my ears for a name. He’s still in love with Hannah. He is the eponymous boyfriend from 8 years previous. Wronged by Hannah and his best mate Ed Byrne, who surprisingly is quite a good actor. The ‘chemistry’ between them is average and we find ourselves wanting them to get together even though we know it’s a logistical nightmare as Martin’s engaged and Hannah’s promiscuous. Whilst this conversation’s progressing, Ed Byrne walks in, the ‘bastard’ we think, but we’re wrong. Rob and Martin get along famously and soon enough, Rob confesses he’s still in love with Hannah. I don’t really know what to think of this. The whole plot reaks of Jimmy Nesbitt and John Thompson in Cold Feet, only set in what looks to be London. The only indication of the groups past that we know of apart from their split after Hannah’s infidelity is that they went to Uni at “stokey” meaning Staffordshire University one presumes. However they all seem a bit half-baked and posh to be going to Staffordshire, which isn’t me putting the Uni down (I applied to go there in fact) but it doesn’t strike me as the place where these sorts of people would want to go.
Without spoiling exactly what happens in the rest of the episode, just take the best attributes from Teachers, This Life and Cold Feet and you basically have Reunited, which is no bad thing as television has lost it’s way with drama’s like these of late. Just look at Married. Single. Other. which was absolutely dreadful. ITV can’t be expected to produce quality drama any longer because they’re far too concerned with crime drama’s and scamming people in phone-ins, Five can only be relied upon to make The Gadget Show and Channel 4 aren’t gonna pump a load of money into light drama projects like this until Big Brother’s over which will end up being this time next year before we see anything. So it’s down to the BBC to give the British public content such as Reunited, which we can all watch and enjoy without having to think too hard. So it’s with this that I say i’d quite like it if they made a series of this. Ed Byrne plays his role well, there’s sex, drugs, infidelity, humour and decent music in there and it’s been years since Coupling, so I think we deserve a posher, sexed-up, dramatic version today.
Reunited is on BBC iPlayer until Wednesday 7th July 2010.
Update: The BBC decided not to commission Reunited. Read here.
