second series

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This isn't easy to write as I don't want to encourage more negative comments from people like painbow whom I very much doubt were ever really fans of this show to begin with, but I feel that I have to speak my mind nevertheless.

Having now watched the whole of the third series, I have to say I was disappointed with the general tone that developed in the show. By the final episode I wasn't laughing very much any more. It is hard to nail down the exact reasons for this but here is my best guess...

Like other TV shows that experience an immediate measure of success or critical acclaim, the tendency is to over-examine what it was that made the show a success in the first place and then over-emphasise in later series the particular features that the producers believe made it successful in the first place. In the case of Drifters, it would seem to me that the producers have decided that this show is primarily about the failings of the hopeless Meg and that consequently the more pathetic her mishaps and the greater her social humiliation, the more we’ll laugh and the bigger the audience will get. Think of Ben Miller in The Worst Week of My Life or Ben Stiller in Meet The Fockers.

However, that is not the way I perceived the show in the first two series. Yes - Meg was clearly the central character and yes - she was lanky, goofy, geeky and not particularly accomplished at dating suitable men and we were invited to laugh at all of these characteristics, but at least she still had some dignity left as well as the friendship of Bunny and Laura. She had a not unattractive guy like Mark completely under her thumb whom she could use and abuse at her total whim. She still had a measure of sexual power and unconventional sex appeal. Sadly, in series 3, even Mark outright rejects her sexual advances and this rejection culminates, very predictably, in a scene where Meg suffers a very public humiliation in front of her friends, parents and onlookers. In episode 6, she is even overlooked for the role of a bridesmaid at her own brother's wedding and only discovers on the day that her friend Laura has been given the role instead.

We are invited to laugh at how utterly pathetic Meg is and how totally ridiculed she is by those closest to her, particularly her parents. You just wouldn't want to be her, would you? She has now become desperate enough to date an unfaithful slob that she calls 'Hot and Cold' - an archetypal commitment phobe. She also dates a suspected sex offender in episode 2 and by episode 5 she is so determined to be seen in the company of a fictional steady boyfriend at her brother’s pre-nuptial dinner that she ponders whether to invite Hot and Cold, or alternatively go with a repulsive arsonist who has just been released from prison again. No prizes for guessing that it all ends in another very public humiliation for Meg in front of her friends and her family (although the bit where the arsonist sets fire to himself is very funny).

The last episode – the wedding of her brother – really sums the whole series up for me, with a totally humiliated Meg poised on the edge of the hotel roof as if she is about to jump off, while all the wedding guests situated below - including a child - gawp up at her and swap their own recollections of her various pathetic failings that they witnessed throughout the day. She is now a person that inspires only pity and contempt in equal measure. Moreover, the idea that her voluptuous, free-spirited cousin Bunny (the lovely Lydia Rose Bewley) would be desperate enough for male attention of her own to try openly propositioning a 'zitty' 15-year old boy in front of all the wedding guests is also a little hard to swallow (no euphemism intended), particularly given the current climate of total fear that prevails in the UK when it comes to sexual relationships and the criminal law.

There are still some really funny bits in series 3, like Laura’s attempts to draw Gary’s attention away from internet porn by playing the role of a sexy ‘MILF’ and Bunny’s hilarious acting role in a live theatre production, but overall I missed that carefree, innocent sense of 3 average skint girl mates just living life on the edge, ignoring social conventions and doing and saying whatever they want – a sort of ruder, female, adult version of The Inbetweeners with no holds barred. As a middle-aged bloke, that is what tickles my fancy about this show to be frank, but there just wasn’t enough of it in series 3 to keep me amused and entertained.

My unwelcome tuppence worth.