As Time Goes By (Series 4)

(Amazon UK link)

We started watching ‘As Time Goes By’ in March this year. We had DVDs of the first two seasons and liked them so much that, when I was in the UK in the Summer, I ordered the third and fourth season as well. We watched the third season in the autumn, and have just finished watching Series Four. Geoffrey Palmer and Judi Dench star as Lionel and Jean, separated by the Korean war, and reunited after thirty years. 

The first few episodes of Season Four revolve around Lionel writing the script for a mini-series commissioned by some people in the United States. He’s finding it very difficult to write about poignant memories, and is not helped by the loquacious though well-meaning Mrs Flack (Vivienne Martin). The background to these first few episodes also involves Lionel attempting to get used to living with Jean in a household that not only includes her twice-divorced daughter Judy (Moira Brooker) but Jean’s secretary Sandy (Jenny Funnell), who has broken up with her boyfriend.

Another episode involves Jean’s sister-in-law Penny (Moyra Fraser) being convinced her husband is having an affair, when it turns out that he’s trying to arrange a surprise party. Meanwhile Lionel and Jean decide that they really should get married, and Lionel’s father Rocky (Frank Middlemass) tells them he is giving them his house in the country. 

Later episodes - there are ten in the series - involve wedding jitters, the wedding itself, the end of the honeymoon, filming for the mini-series, and a discussion about whether or not Jean is going to retire. 

We watched one episode per week, and felt quite involved in the storylines which managed to offer something new each time. The acting is excellent, the stories well-done, with no bad language, no nudity, no violence… the humour is in the script and the timing, and the chemistry of the actors with each other. There’s much that’s poignant as well as several places where we smiled. We even laughed aloud a few times. 

I hope we’ll watch this series again in a few years, but - a tad perversely, perhaps - we’ve decided not to get hold of the later series. Apparently there were nine seasons of ‘As Time Goes By’, although the later ones had just six or seven episodes in each. I did glance at the storylines, summarised online elsewhere, and they looked rather less appealing, with Jean and Lionel starting to show signs of age, and the younger generation having trouble with their love-lives. I think it’s better to stop while we’re still enjoying the series, now that Jean and Lionel are happily married, and have made some decisions about where to live, and what they will be doing.

You probably have to be at least in your fifties to appreciate this series fully. I did see a few episodes on TV when I was much younger, and liked them, which is why I acquired the first two seasons on DVD when they were available. But we didn't watch them until this year. It was much better being around the ages of Jean and Lionel. 

It’s an undemanding show, with not a great deal happening and just a handful of characters who recur in most episodes. It doesn’t have the rather brash humour of some American sitcoms, nor any slapstick or canned laughter. It’s gentle, amusing, and heartwarming and I thoroughly recommend it if clean 1990s  UK sitcoms appeal to you.

Review copyright 2023 Sue's DVD Reviews