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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mel O&#039;Drama" data-source="post: 350246" data-attributes="member: 23">Since it's so brief and I'm over 75% of the way through, I'll jot a few thoughts about the spinoff in here: Thomas & Sarah <img src="https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftelevisionheaven.co.uk%2Fimg%2Fasset%2FbWFpbi90aG9tYXNfYW5kX3NhcmFoLmpwZw%3D%3D%3Fp%3Dseo%26s%3D153896326a5ff21b897dc346c9dc228c&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=15b74e73700fb899a91e549f985785d5cd0aaf99c581e10c2e13e6cc8440123c&ipo=images" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /> Birds Of A Feather / The Silver Ghost / The Biters Bit / The Vanishing Lady / Made In Heaven / Alma Mater / A Day At The Metropole / The Poor Young Widow Of Peckham / There Is A Happy Land / Return To GethynIt’s helped me to read before watching that this series is quite a different animal from its predecessor and was rather poorly received as a result. This meant my expectations were well and truly in check when beginning to watch. In terms of chronology, it’s interesting that this series - shown years after UpDown ended - begins in the gap between UpDown Series Two and Three, with later episodes taking place at the same time as UpDown’s Third Series.  The most recent, Return To Gethyn, takes place in Winter 1912, meaning Thomas’s brief-but-eventful return to Wales coincided with Alfred’s brief-but-eventful return to Eaton Place. This means T&S is effectively all a flashback. A "midquel", if you like.The series also begins some revisionism: as they left UpDown, the two were said to be married and expecting a baby. As T&S begins they’re separated (the wedding never having taken place) and Sarah - we eventually learn - has miscarried. It almost feels like retcon territory, but not quite. We never saw them tie the knot and, as the series goes along, we see them posing regularly as Mr & Mrs Watkins, so it’s easy to view their final visit to Eaton Place was a trial run for this. If I had any feeling at all of what the series might be, I’d have guessed at a series of episodes akin to The Property Of A Lady from Series Two of UpDown. I wasn’t that far off the mark. With the episodes being quirky, eclectic and somewhat random I initially viewed it as a high class sitcom. By the time T&S was a third of the way through, though, it felt more like a series of pilot episodes: as though the writers had pitched different ideas and they’d all ended up being filmed. There have been numerous changes of direction and it feels quite jarring. The first episode had Sarah established in one setting with the supporting players in her household. By the second she’d moved on and Thomas’s world became hers. Fine, I thought, thinking I understood that the regular supporting characters consisted of loveably hapless assistant mechanic Tubby (the series’ equivalent of Ruby, it seems) and Madge (played by Maria Charles who annoyed the hell out of me in Never The Twain but was tolerable enough here). A couple of episodes later, though, and they’d vanished over the horizon as Thomas and Sarah moved on to pastures new. Simply put, there is no ensemble. The only familiar faces in each episode are the two leads, meaning that the series succeeds or fails almost entirely on the charms of two actors. Were many of these scenes or stories incorporated into UpDown, with cuts away to other characters and situation, it might be a different matter. Here we get an overdose of Collins and Alderton and, while both of them are decent actors with good screen presence, this is an unfortunate case of familiarity breeding contempt. It cannot be avoided when both are onscreen more or less 100% of the time. Some familiar faces have helped (even Thora Hird’s done a guest-starring bit), but it’s not enough to stop the series from feeling like a bit of a vanity project for the two leads. The situations also seem quite extreme. One episode sees them running a matrimonial bureau from an affluent house. In the next Thomas is a teacher in a school (while no doubt a bit of a nod to one of Alderton’s best-known roles, it actually feels more A.J. Wentworth, BA. than Please Sir!). In one episode they own a haberdashery. Then they don’t. There’s The One Where Thomas Becomes A Racing Driver; The One Where Thomas Almost Dies Of Pneumonia (with such uncomfortably realistic gasping and wheezing and loud swallowing that I stopped caring about the outcome as long as it happened quickly and quietly); The One Where Sarah Lies About Being Pregnant… etc, etc. Much of the time it’s not always clear how they got into these situations, or even to believe it of them. I never felt there was a good reason, for example, why Thomas would step in to expose corruption at a public school at great risk to himself and with nothing to gain other than doing the right thing. It just didn’t compute. Perhaps because of these situations, the characterisations seem to differ greatly as well. It’s really hard to get a handle on Thomas in particular, since he can be affable and passive or calculating and cruel to order. The disparate, almost experimental nature reminds me, in a way, of Knots Landing’s third season. And just as that yielded some gold, so has T&S. The last few episodes have seemed a little less disposable. I don’t know whether this is a case of the series beginning to improve or me settling into it. The entire arc in Wales, with Sarah discovering that Thomas not only has a child born out of wedlock but is also possibly a rapist was compelling enough. Yes, the “twist” that Thomas’s religious zealot of a brother was actually the rapist could be seen coming from a mile away, but it still felt satisfying to watch it play out. There Is A Happy Land saw some of T&S’s most compelling scenes following Thomas’s discovery that Sarah had lied to him when saying she was pregnant. His payback is arguably the series’ finest moment. The setting is perfect: a dinner party where Sarah hopes to make a good impression on important and wealthy members of their new community (who believe her to be Thomas’s wife). He begins by casually-but-pointedly dropping into the conversation that Sarah is a former music hall singer who met him while they were both servants. He then delivers his club de grace by telling everyone present - now watching in shocked silence - that he hopes Sarah will do him the honour of marrying him before their baby is born. It’s one of those winners that makes the whole series worth the investment. The following scene reaps the benefits of Thomas being written with such wild variations from episode to episode. Because he is now so unpredictable, the scene where he speaks with a darkly intense tone, occasionally breaking into a shout is rather unsettling. By the time he removes his belt and starts lashing out at objects with it as he approaches Sarah, it really feels that all bets are off and anything can happen. The few links with UpDown have been welcome. There’s the Rolls Royce, frequent mentions of their time at Eaton Place and the Bellamys. Sarah’s squeezed in a rendition of What Are We Gonna Do With Uncle Arthur? and briefly revived her Clemence Dumas pseudonym. The sliding scale of time - with the series being made some time after UpDown but has allowed for a few little errors in chronology, though. As an example, in Return To Gethyn, Sarah mentions working for Lord Bellamy, but since the episode takes place in 1912 (early 1913 at the very latest) and Richard didn’t become a Viscount until New Year 1917 this is but one of the small-but-glaring anachronisms. Perhaps knowing there are only a few episodes left is helping me appreciate it while it’s here. I can’t say I feel invested, but it’s not been without its good points and so I look forward to seeing how it wraps up the story.</blockquote>

Verification: Who played JR Ewing?