Review by Justin Bateman
Stars Paul Nicholas, Jan Francis, Sylvia Kay, John Ringham | Written by John Sullivan
UK certification PG | UK RRP £49.99 | DVD Region 2 | 4 discs | Directed by Ray Butt, Sue Bysh
Ahh, the 1980s. Pastel shades, shaggy perms for men and lead actors singing the theme tune of television programmes. This three-series sitcom comes from the mind of John Sullivan, the man who brought us the classic Only Fools and Horses. It’s no wonder he was awarded an OBE for services to drama what with Del Boy and Rodney and all those years of comedy capers. Unfortunately, Just Good Friends doesn’t have quite the same enduring appeal of the Trotters.
Five years after Vince (Nicholas) left Penny (Francis) at the altar, the two bump into each other in a pub. She has since got married and is now separated while Vince is still living the single life. But there are still feelings between them and recognising this Vince decides it’s time to make a play for his former sweetheart. And plot-wise, that’s just about it.
Most of the drama in Just Good Friends lies in a staple of ‘80s sitcoms, the differences in class between the protagonists. While Penny comes from a defiantly middle-class family, replete with domineering prim mother Daphne (Kay), Vince is a charming, cheeky chappy from the ‘wrong’ side of, er, Chipping Ongar in Essex. There’s also the small matter of Vince’s inability to take anything seriously, tell the truth or generally ingratiate himself with Penny.
While series one focuses on Vince and Penny gently sparring, in the second series the two are living together but predictably it doesn’t work out. As a studio-based sitcom, Just Good Friends is perhaps necessarily sedentary but does feel overly talky and as a result isn’t remotely memorable. By series three, two years have passed, Penny has moved to Paris, Vince has got married, his family has moved to Portugal and there’s a lot more in the way of plot.
Just Good Friends is very much a product of its time – which is another way of saying it’s dated pretty badly. There are jokes about products no longer available in the shops, fashions which are so old they’re almost back in style, and the less said about Paul Nicholas’s blond shaggy perm the better. As this is a John Sullivan-scripted show there are a few decent one-liners and some astute insights into relationships but they’re quite well hidden amongst one hell of a lot of cheese. Nicholas is very hard to dislike and Jan Francis does the prim woman scorned rather well but beyond a large slice of nostalgia this is little more than reminder of what a classic Only Fools and Horses is.
EXTRAS ★★ The fourth disc in the set is a 90-minute Christmas special which recreates the period from the moment Vince and Penny met in the late 1970s. It’s quite a melancholy look back on their former lives, a feeling which isn’t helped by the lack of laughter track, present throughout the three series. However, the most striking feature of this triple-length episode is in the opening 15 minutes. Because of licensing issues, the music used throughout an early party scene is replaced by cover versions and subtitles are employed to convey the dialogue. It’s slightly bizarre to witness and while it’s probably better than cutting the scene entirely it does spoil the moment somewhat. Still, for completists, the inclusion of this retrospective will doubtless be welcome.