wonderful funny series!


I have admired Judy Dench in many movies like "Chocolat", "The Importance of Being Earnest" and so on, but this earlier series is a surprise! I had never seen it before on television, what a pity!

I bought “A Fine Romance - The Complete First Series” DVD with 6 episodes. Unfortunately, the complete series of 26 episodes box set is only for Region 1 code, while I’m in Region 2 zone, and I found only that DVD for Europe, but I like this series so much! I hope other DVD will be realised soon!

The four characters are so nice, this two couples, Laura Dalton (Judi Dench) and Mike Selway (Michael Williams)- Helen (Susan Penhaligon) and Phil Barker (Richard Warwick) are well played by actors.

I found out that Judi Dench and Michael Williams were married in real life, so the story is double funny for their shyness in the beginning.

In the story, Judy Dench is a bizarre and obstinate woman with her independent life. Michael Williams has British humor and beautiful blue eyes!
Susan Penhaligon is a sweet and beautiful lady who cares about her sister Laura.
And Richard Warwick is an handsome loving married man which, at parties, is surrounded by women who fancy him.

Finally, I'm sad that Williams and Warwick are already disappeared!

If you want to see a good series, you must see it!!!

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I have just discoved this series and I love it! I have been a fan of Judi Dench for some time now and now I am a fan of her husband

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I believe volume 3 is coming out in August of this year, and I think it is a Region 2 release. It is at the following link (just scroll down the page:)

http://www.action-tv.org.uk/news_dvdvideo.htm

Incidentally, I have all of this series, and it gets better as it goes along. How lucky you are to have this to look forward to! The humour is so understated and British it's brilliant.

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I've loved Judi Dench ever since I first saw her in "As Time Goes By" when I was about nine or ten, & in the movies. My dad got my mum the first video of "A Fine Romance" about a year ago & when they went out one night I watched it out of curiosity (& nothing else to do, lol). I absolutely LOVED it, & was really pissed off to discover there were only 3 episodes on the video, so immediately went out & bought the complete box set the following day. I completely fell in love with Mike - he's not exactly the conventional smooth-talking sex god, but he tries hard in everything he does, has genuine affection for Laura & I think he's wonderful. It's now one of my favourite sitcoms, & I'm glad I had nothing else to do that first night! :)


"Fate shuffles the cards and we play" (Schopenhauer)

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Wow. I haven't seen this in years.

I was searching for something else (Sapphire & Steel) when I discovered that all of this was out on DVD.

I must get it! A real classic, if I remember correctly.

http://yetanothertvreviewpodcast.blogspot.com/

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I have loved this series since the 1980's, and I still love it. ^_^
(I hope PBS re-airs the rest of it at some point. They have now gone through
the first half of it three times that I know of in the past six months, and are
presently going through it a fourth time. They keep on not proceeding with
the rest of it. I've seen all of it before, but not recently [recently I've
only seen the first several episodes over and over ^_~]. I think that PBS
is trying REALLY hard to get us to buy the DVD boxed set [well, I probably
will, sometime! ^_^]. I saw it first on PBS in the mid-1980's when it first
came to America, then a few years later on A&E [Arts and Entertainment Network]
[they used to show really great stuff and a lot of it English...now they seem
to mostly show both fact and fiction crime shows...sigh...I mean, that stuff's
okay too sometimes, but...sigh...and long ago they started having the same
typical usual commercials as most other channels...I miss the days when they
only had a few commercials (for [1] The New Yorker and [2] Rubbermaid
["don't you wish everything was made like Rubbermaid"] and [3] Black and Decker...
maybe a few others occasionally, but those were the main three, for a while!)
and their commercials were always a little off the beaten path, and their channel
had its own unique style (this was in, for instance, 1989 and 1990...ahhh...good old times! ^_^)].)

More recently, I have been enjoying Judi Dench's performance as Matty in
Cranford (on Masterpiece, the show-formerly-known-as Masterpiece Theatre).
She's still good. ^_^

Re-watching A Fine Romance these days, I can't help thinking that she
and Michael Williams were adorable together. ^_^ (I just wish he was
still alive. ~_~ [Is Richard Warwick gone too? ~_~ He was so cute
when he was young/youngish! ^_^])

Judi Dench, Michael Williams, Richard Warwick, Susan Penhaligon...
the perfect party of four...they all played with/off each other
brilliantly. ^_^

Cute moments include:

Phil pretending to be French (really well) and Mike trying to copy him (really badly). ^_~

Helen (on the phone with Laura): "I swear on Grumpy's grave..."
Phil (mouthing, looking puzzled): "Grumpy's grave???" ^_~

Mike, upside down at the dentist's office, reciting the beginning of
"The Charge of the Light Brigade" (to distract Laura from her intense
fear of having dental work done): "Half a league, half a league, half
a league onward...into the valley of death..." (then gets up and says,
to the nurse, something like, "I suppose you wonder what I'm doing" ^_~
[and the nurse said "No" ^_~])

Later in the same episode, housesitting for Phil and Helen...Mike is
"in the mood", Laura isn't, Laura doesn't know that she was all over
Mike after the visit to the dentist...
Mike: "We should have come here straight from the dentist."
Laura: "What's that supposed to mean?"

^_~

When he was putting her to bed when she was "under the influence" of the
drugs from the dentist...
Mike: "Do you want to go anywhere before you go to bed?"
Laura: "Torquay."
Mike: "Not tonight."
Laura: "I know a dog with a wooden leg in Torquay."
(a little later) "His name was Harold."
Mike: "The dog."
Laura: "Yes. Harold Dog." (laughs)

^_~


When Phil was talking about how Helen used to be such an attractive secretary
(she had nice legs and a nice smile) and Helen says, so all that she was, then,
was a nice smile and a pair of legs...
Phil: "No, you were a very good typist, too."
Helen (indignantly, to Mike and Laura): "Too, you hear the too?"

^_~

Trying on dresses:
The saleslady, grandly, about Laura: "Here Madam is, doesn't
Madam look lovely?"
Laura: "Fat, Madam looks fat."

^_~

Judi Dench forever (dame of comedy, not just drama and Shakespeare! ^_~)

(If you haven't seen As Time Goes By [a different British situation
comedy series, or "Britcom" as PBS calls those, made later when
she was older, about getting back together with a lost love
(not Michael Williams...Geoffrey Palmer...but he's nice too! ^_^)],
well, that one's another must-see...also been shown [all the way through,
I think!] many times on PBS. ^_^ [I love the song "As Time Goes By" because
of that show...oh, and also, of course, the song "A Fine Romance" because
of that show! ^_^])

=^____^=






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