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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mel O&#039;Drama" data-source="post: 335821" data-attributes="member: 23">My shelves are beginning to groan under the weight of an ever-growing collection of unwatched sitcoms. For most of 2022 I've been lost in the MCU, with diversions into documentaries and variety chat shows.It feels like so much longer than just six months since my last Britcom, but now that studio audience laughter is calling to me as surely as the song of a siren. It's time to journey back to 1981....<img src="https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fi.pinimg.com%2Foriginals%2F2a%2Fd8%2F67%2F2ad867b227da5fea3cac5ed4e65d7111.jpg&f=1&nofb=1" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" />Over the last seven years, one of many revelations to have come from revisiting sitcoms I remember from childhood is that there's a great deal of nuance I missed back then. In particular, I greatly underestimated the writing of Esmonde & Larbey. Ever Decreasing Circles and The Good Life in particular were two series that underwhelmed me when when I was young yet knocked my socks off when I rewatched them in 2016.Then there's Bob Larbey's solo writing. As Time Goes By appealed to me greatly when I watched it in full for the first time back in 2017-18 (pages 5-6 of this thread). This bodes well for my current series, since the two have strong ties on several different levels.A Fine Romance - Bob Larbey's first vehicle as a solo writer - has much in common with his later As Time Goes By. Apart from the writer himself, both have a very similar premise as romantic comedies which begin with a middle aged couple meeting and follows the various milestones and hiccups in their courtship. Both feature the same lead actress, and both are named after songs that are familiar, oft-covered standards, which also serve as the theme song.A Fine Romance goes the extra mile here by having the theme's lyrics sung by Judi Dench herself. And while both songs might feel similar due to their familiarity and the fact that they were both written in the 1930s, it's notable that the semi-comic lyrics to A Fine Romance are far less schmaltzy. One could even take the view that they're extremely cynical, and on this level it's in perfect harmony with the extremely unsentimental approach taken in the wonderfully witty writing.This series was my introduction not only to the song, but to Judi Dench. Despite having gained an OBE a decade earlier, Judi was not at this point the National Treasure she has since become (it's entirely probable that A Fine Romance was what really got the mainstream public familiar with her name as well as face) and I knew next to nothing about theatre. And so, for most of my childhood (and possibly for some time into adulthood), Judi was simply "that actress with the pudding bowl haircut from that sitcom".I did watch the series, and I think I did so with some regularity, but I don't remember ever "claiming" it as one of those series I would go out of my way not to miss. I suspect either it was watched by my parents, or it happened to be on before something else, or there was simply nothing else on TV at the same time (remember, when the series began the UK had only THREE channels from which to choose). I probably categorised it alongside the likes of Ever Decreasing Circles. There was a twee middle class thing going on, and I didn't find it riotously funny. And like Ever Decreasing Circles, I simply missed much of the nuance and Larbey's understated wit either wasn't fully appreciated by my young self or it went over my head entirely.Watching the first four episodes last night, I found myself laughing a lot. The lines are just wonderful, with lots of trademark Larbey repartee. My first chortle came at an exchange between Laura and her sister Helen:While it's Laura's final line that's the laugh line, I found myself guffawing at Helen's preceding line. It was so blatantly diplomatic and understated that it just felt extremely British.The British brand name-dropping is perfectly pitched and gives it an air of Victoria Wood. Dench's incensed outrage at being called intelligent is a joy to behold. It feels very Ria Parkinson and it echoes a line spoken by Judi herself that's stuck in my mind from a People Magazine interview discussing ageing given decades after this series had ended:</blockquote>

Verification: What month follows July?