As Time Goes By (Series 1 and 2)

(Amazon UK link)

We’ve had a boxed set of ‘As Time Goes By’, series 1 and 2, for many years. I’ve no memory of how we acquired it; but I did remember it being a good TV show when I caught a few episodes in the 1990s. We wanted something light to watch once a week, and Judi Dench is always good value. So we started watching series 1 about four months ago.

The opening couple of episodes introduce the two main protagonists: Jean (Judi Dench) and Lionel (Geoffrey Palmer), as well as Jean’s daughter Judith (Moira Brooker). Jean manages her own business, supplying editors and proof-readers, one of whom is Judith.

Lionel, meanwhile, is trying to finish a book he’s writing about his life in Kenya. Judith is allocated to help him, and finds her quite attractive despite over two decades’ worth of age difference.

It doesn’t take long to uncover a surprising coincidence: Jean and Lionel knew each other in the 1950s, during the Korean war. She was a nurse and he was a soldier; they were in love, and intimate, and hoped to spend the rest of their lives together. But each thinks the other was responsible for their having lost touch for thirty years.

The first series sees Jean and Lionel gradually getting to know each other again, with many misunderstandings that are gradually resolved. It doesn’t help that Lionel's agent Alastair (Philip Bretherton) finds Jean remarkably attractive, again despite a significant age difference, and is determined to win her. Alastair is a caricatured creation, full of enthusiasm, clichés and endless good humour as he attempts to encourage Lionel to finish what sounds like a decidedly dull book.

It could have been rather trite or predictable - and I am astonished to learn that this ran for nine seasons - but the main characters are impeccable in their timing, and there’s a great deal of humour. We found ourselves smiling regularly, even chuckling a few times as the series progressed.

I’m still not entirely sure what it is about this show that makes it so very watchable, but somehow we found it very appealing. One episode at a time was rarely enough. So we watched two episodes most weeks, and segued straight into series 2. By the time I realised that the second season had just seven episodes, I’d managed to order seasons three and four from ‘World of Books’, knowing we were going to want more.

Perhaps we wouldn’t have appreciated it so much when we were younger (I think I must only have seen two or three episodes). But now we’re older ourselves, albeit not going back as far as 1950, we can appreciate the subtleties, and the way the two principal characters resist being labelled ‘old’.

We watched the last episode of the second season last night, and since it didn’t feel like a season finale, we went straight on to the first episode of series three.

I doubt if we’ll want to see all nine seasons of this, but am very glad we decided to watch the first two, as we’ve both liked them very much indeed.  If you appreciate gentle 1990s humour, and a slow-moving mainly character-based story with middle-aged protagonists, then I would recommend these highly.

Review copyright 2023 Sue's DVD Reviews