Cold Feet (Cold Feet)

Member Name: polydeuces

Product:	Cold Feet
Date:	09/08/08 (3 review reads)
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It is hard to decide whether Cold Feet tries to be Friends and fails or whether it just is not supposed to be like Friends at all. Sure it has 6 main characters 3 male 3 female one of whom actually was in Friends those with a conspicuous lack of success. Their ages are similar but we have left the Big Apple and moved to Manchester. However whereas the characters in Friends are somehow more strongly defined those in Cold Feet have a more credible breadth and depth to them. As a consequence of this I found it far easier to identify with the characters in Cold Feet than I ever can with Friends.

The characters are :-
Rachel played by Helen Baxendale who appeared as Ross's intended bride in Friends, I personally do not like her as an actress and I think she is again the weakest in this.

Adam, her partner, most of the time, is played by the excellent James Nesbitt. They have been seen breaking up in one series and getting back together again in the next.
Peter is played by the brilliant John Thomson who must surely have made a career for himself now as a true character actor. His capacity to show the hurt and pathos within his life is unsurpassed at present. I can watch his performances over and over again as he never seems to be acting it's just so real.

His wife Jenny is played by Fay Ripley and she manages to almost match Thompson. I cannot say that the state of the relationship is one I can relate to thankfully but the portrayal is real and touching. Jenny also has a thing about Adam which adds to the interconnecting spice.
David played by Robert Bathurst is married to Karen (Hermione Morris) and the last series saw their family extend to 3 children.

It is inevitable that this is not going to be a programme where the relationships are all stable and nothing ever changes and there are the usual cycle of on-off romances and sexual intrigue but at least with Cold Feet it is credible. The characters of Friends have been through so many relationships if they put qa notch in the bed-leg every time they had a new partner the bed would have collapsed by now.
With Cold Feet you can soon come to care about what happens, you will the situations to develop in a way that does not hurt those you identify with. The reason for this is the strength of the writing and the excellence of the performances. Add to this the much less frenetic pace compared with Friends and the whole show is much more enjoyable. Probably not as many laughs but this is not simply a situation comedy. There is more lasting development of the situations whereas Friends exists within a tight 25 minute format.

I look forward to a future series of Cold Feet if it can be as humourous, dramatic and thoroughly entertaining as the first ones.

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