Friday, September 09, 2005
Watching afternoon repeats and the food he eats in the country
BOYCIE! The Green Green Grass, BBC1, 8.30pm
We feel it's best to open this preview with a little bit of honesty: we're not especially big fans of Only Fools and Horses. It's fine in small doses, but we think it's rather overplayed (not to mention overrated) and the sheer inescapability of it makes us rather less inclined to fondly remember the bits we actually did like. Only Fools is, however, on a semi-permanent hiatus (i.e. it's over according to everyone who worked on it, but we're still convinced it'll turn up for the odd special here and there in the future), and our thoughts turn to the spinoff, Green Green Grass, starring Boycie, Marlene, and their son Tyler (whom, we're informed by the Radio Times was last seen in a pram) as they move to a Shropshire farmhouse. The sudden relocation for the previously urban family comes after Boycie informs the police of the activities of the supposedly infamous Driscoll brothers, thus making the title clever: as well as being an intertextual reference to a well-known phrase, Boycie is a grass and he is green, for country pursuits are new to him. From what we can tell, it's a fairly standard take-some-characters-and-stick-them-in-an-unfamiliar-situation type of comedy, and while hardly original, it's not necessarily a bad thing. Certainly, of all the characters to put in this spinoff, Boycie and Marlene seem like an excellent choice, since they always tended to steal most of their Only Fools scenes. However, we feel that we should warn you that this is a BBC1 Friday night comedy, so the danger signs are there. We're still recovering from According to Bex. Shudder.
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2 Comments:
The title "The Green Green Grass"'s apparent cleverness (and its plot) is basically stolen from "Grass", the Simon Day comedy drama that rather kicked ass.
By 
, at
7:57 pm
Totally. "Grass" was an excellent series. I'm a bit bemused that BBC1 have cancelled it and replaced it with this! (And "Grass" was a much better title.)
By , at
12:03 am
