Review of Cold Feet: The Complete First Series

Introduction

Take six couples. Add some drama in the shape of having babies, living together, acting out fantasies, previous relationships, an interfering work life, a Spanish nanny, and a bit of golf mixed with women fighting, women partying, clubs, drugs, police, tears, arguments and a few other things. It`s all ripe for natural comedy too, so make sure that`s in the mix as well. The result is Granada Television`s Cold Feet.

I don`t know about you, but I was never a fan of this series when it first started all those years ago, and this DVD represents the first time I`ve ever watched it fully. First there`s the pilot episode then all six episodes of series one.

Episode Summary:

• Pilot Episode: This is our introduction to the main cast of six: Adam (James Nesbitt) and Rachel (Helen Baxendale), Pete (Dave Thomson) and Jenny (Fay Ripley) and David (Robert Bathurst) and Karen (Hermione Norris). The notable points in this show are how Adam and Rachel meet with Adam`s famous nude serenade, and the warming up of the relationships between them plus the other two married couples, Pete and Jenny, and David and Karen. Pete and Jenny are trying for a baby.

• Episode 1: It`s nine months after the pilot airs and Jenny is about to give birth. This is driving Pete mental as he prepares time and again to make sure that nothing will go wrong, even down to detailed map routes with multiple acetate overlays in the event of a `what if` situation. David and Karen take on a nanny to help in their household as Karen can`t cope on her own and David is always busy with work unable to split his time between home and office.

• Episode 2: A big step for Adam and Rachel as they decide to move in together. Rachel has a secret though in the shape of a previous relationship that comes back to haunt her. This leads to difficulties with Adam as a result and he goes off to stay with Pete and Jenny for a while. Pete kicks him out after just a few days since they`re only just beginning to cope with the new baby. Adam then comes face-to-face with Kris, Rachel`s husband from a previous relationship, when he goes back round to the flat he shares with Rachel.

• Episode 3: Sexual frustration, brewers` droop and fantasies are the keywords here. David`s masculinity is in doubt, so is Adam`s and Pete can`t seem to get any and when he does he`s fantasising about the new barmaid. This leads to gargantuan misunderstandings...

• Episode 4: Pete`s parents come to stay and the tension between father and son becomes unbearable. Karen goes back to work and starts editing the book of a Booker Prize winning author and this inspires Adam to write the novel in him. He lacks experiences of his own, so he bases it on the relationship between Pete and his father.

• Episode 5: Living together has its ups and downs. Adam`s bad habits begin to irritate Rachel no end and she finds it difficult to have time to herself. Pete and Jenny watch telly but there`s never anything on so they decide to go out for the night. Daivd and Karen are having a few difficulties of their own and decide to see a marriage guidance counsellor. This leads the boys to have their own night out involving a club, drugs, young people and the police, while the girls get flirty and go to a party for fun.

• Episode 6: David, Karen, Pete and Jenny go to a posh dinner do where things get out of hand between Jenny and David`s boss, Natalie. Adam makes the biggest committment of his life once he finds out Rachel is pregnant. Things are never what they seem however and Rachel`s uncertainty leads to a confession to Adam.


As you can see, it`s not without a lot of events taking place! Everything is weaved together nicely into a 50 minute show and can be played one after another, or you can select individual programmes and scenes.

Video

Presented with a 4:3 fullframe, the video transfer for the most part is quite good. Colours, contrast and balance are good and the image remains clean and detailed without any digital artefacts cropping up. There were some shots that looked a little grainy, and this is very noticeable. Thankfully I only spotted this in a couple of scenes. Since I never saw this series before, I can`t be sure if it was made for widescreen. Having been made in 1996 it`s difficult to really know. It`a a good transfer though.

Audio

Just plain old Dolby Digital 2.0 encoded Dolby Surround. Back in 1996/98 mainstream television programmes rarely had any kind of surround sound except for some of Granada`s output like Prime Suspect, Cracker, Bad Influence, and Cold Feet to name but a few. Cold Feet is pretty much dialogue driven, so the dialogue can be heard clearly from the front and sounds quite clear. I had a few problems with Nesbitt`s accent since there are no subtitles here, but other than this, the sound was fine. Subtle if little use of the surrounds though.

Features

Simple to navigate static menus where you can select an individual episode, or play all. There are three episodes per disc with the pilot episode on disc one.

• Pilot Episode - This is the show that kicked it all off for Granada Television. See James Nesbitt, a guitar, no clothes on, and a conveniently placed rose. It`s only fitting that the pilot is included to properly fill in the start of the series.

• The Meaning Of Love (8 mins) - This features our three couples talking to camera in character, talking about love, their relationships and is replete with clips from series one. This is a nice short, but it would have been better on disc two since I watched this halfway through the series and it has clips of stuff I hadn`t seen yet. D`oh!

• Photo Album (disc two) - 20 colour stills of the cast.

• There are no subtitles whatsoever on the discs. Bad move Granada.

Just an average range of features here, though it would have been nice to have cast and crew bios, production notes, or anything else for that.

Conclusion

I`ll be honest with you, Cold Feet isn`t usually the kind of populist series that I`d pay attention to, despite it being one of the most successful series on ITV for a long time with 10m plus viewers tuning in on a regular basis. I tried to watch the pilot episode the first time it aired back in 1996, but I didn`t like it. I was in my mid-20s so it had no appeal simply because it didn`t reflect anything that I or my close circle were involved in. My frostiness to the programme was akin to watching thirtysomething on Channel 4 in the 80s.

Give me Friends or Coupling (six characters seeming to be the magic number here) any day of the week and I`d be far more interested in the light relief afforded by 30 minutes of TV time, not Cold Feet which looks serious and lasts almost double the time I can stand to sit down. What more could we possibly glean in life that we hadn`t seen before in This Life and countless other shows? We`ve got another six characters, some comedy, some drama...is this a British version of Friends?

Now I`m in my early thirties and I`ve had the chance to watch this series from the start. I`ve changed a bit since `96, and so have my thoughts on Cold Feet. I can certainly sit still for longer periods that`s for sure. After the painless viewing of the pilot episode, I was ready for the other six shows of the series proper. I enjoyed it. Does this mean that I`m warming to the idea of pipes, slippers and a nice cardy? Or slowing down and settling down? Well, I do groan a most satisfied grunt when I get to sit down these days...Most of my friends are settling down, and I get an ear full of what goes on. From engagements and marriages, through to children and families, career, housing and bereavement. Cold Feet reflects the mood in an entertaining and humourous way, nailing it down so well that it has me in stitches. I`m not normally this easy to please.

The first series of Cold Feet is entertaining and funny without any of that annoying audience laughter. The writing improves, as do the actors as they become more familiar and I actually looked forward to one episode after the other. Each seems to be self contained while carrying relationships and threads from the previous show. Plus of course the obligatory end of series cliffhanger, which even had me gasping for more. The writing here seems to cover a huge array of events that definitely keep the momentum moving at an even pace all the way through. I`m curious now to see how the writing develops in the second series so I`ll be paying special attention to this. There are a lot of things that can be covered so I`m sure it`ll be no less compelling than series one.

Would I recommend it? If, like me, you shied away from this series for the similar reasons I`ve outlined, then you too may be surprised at how good Cold Feet actually is. It`s well worth seeing if you haven`t already seen it, just don`t go in blinkered thinking that it`s a British version of Friends. It`s not. It seems to be more grown up with no less humour and a lot more consistency in the writing department coming from the mind of just one, Mike Bullen. I think it`s well worth seeing. The cliffhanger got me, so I`m off to watch series two, now!