Festive Names

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mel O&#039;Drama" data-source="post: 307815" data-attributes="member: 23">Another two episodes down means I'm now already halfway through the series with the standard format becoming established now Fletch has made it home. Certainly compared with Porridge, Going Straight feels like a more traditional domestic sitcom. Many of the elements could be seen in its peers of the era. There's the sassy, winsome daughter who gives her father palpitations with her mini skirts and long-haired ex-con lover.  And the dopey teenage son with what Fletch calls his "National Health acne". But since we're seeing life through the prism of Fletch there's an enjoyable distortion to it. Certainly it's very non-traditional in the best ways. Since Fletch's wife has run off with a friend who has a cardboard empire there's no sitcom Mum to pull things together. That role falls to Porridge returnee, with Patricia Brake channelling Barbara Windsor using her RADA Cockney accent while chewing gum as though her life depended on it, giving her nails what for with an emery board or spitting onto her hand to test the temperature of the iron. Anything to show us she's working class. And I like it. Helping continuity from the preceding series, her lover is none other than Godber. He could have felt shoehorned in had the groundwork not been so carefully laid throughout the entire run of Porridge. Padding out the cast as dopey son Raymond is Nicholas Lyndhurst in a typical early role which pre-dates his dopey son on Butterflies by some months. It's been an impressive performance as he radiates apathy and boredom with every line making it feel real and funny both at the same time. Even at this young age he seems aware that his pallid tones and his tall, lankness are inherently funny - especially as he looms over  Barker's squat, round frame. The writers are aware of this too, with lines about Fletch being able to spot his son following him to the shops because his ears stuck out either side of the lamppost he hid behind. This awareness means Lyndhurst's his performance is dialled right down and there's never any sense of him "doing" comedy or trying to be funny. Which makes it all the funnier. Indeed, much of the series is played completely straight, with a refreshing lack of forced comedy, running gags, catchphrases, winks to the audience or gurning that some might be tempted to employ. The third episode, for example, had some lengthy scenes between Fletch and a runaway girl that felt very much like Corrie of the era. There's some wry humour peppered in the dialogue, but watching many of these scenes without the laughter of the studio audience one could easily be watching a nicely-observed dramatic piece of the era. The girl wasn't a particularly great actress, but that felt authentic to the era as well. And despite its relatively "sorted" ending, there's some genuine pathos and cynicism along the way. That's not to say the series is without bigger moments of comedy gold. The second episode has a plot with Fletch planning to dig up the ill-gotten gains of a bank job he'd done before going inside, only to discover that he's been pipped to the post by a housing developer and his spot is now marked by the doorstep of a newly-built house. It's uncannily reminiscent of the plot and premise of The Big Job, a really funny pseudo Carry On from 1975, but because of this series' grounded nature and the established character of Fletch that's quickly forgotten and it has its own special little twist. In this case, Fletch - having been confronted carrying his shovel - is forced to dig a pond for the owner on the boggy ground that will become the man's lawn. And this after getting blisters digging his own garden when Ingrid had confronted him about the same shovel. What's more, the writing acknowledges that the loot is probably no longer in situ, and Godber comments there are probably "a couple of Irish drain layers livin' in the lap of luxury in Palma by now" It's bittersweet. Fletch has lost something and still has his money worries, but he's been kept on the straight and narrow - even if only by fate.</blockquote>

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