BEN!

I totally 100% agree with you jolly. You stated exactly how I felt. I craved more episodes with Ben and when it was announced at the time that they had recast the Mathew character I was so disappointed. Neil Stuke was a nice enough actor and gave it all he could be he was different to Ben's Matthew.

Ben Chaplin played Matthew as an iconic character. he was kind of like a drama film character in a sitcom/ a very stylised and unique sort of character for a sitcom. Neil played it in a totally wacky-good-old-British-sitcom-character way like all the sitcoms of old Some Mothers Do Ave Em, early Blackadder,Young Ones, etc etc. He was good but he was a pale imitator for what Ben had given the character.
Ben gave Matthew real depth and- the most important part of all-made him absolutely laugh out loud funny.He was hilarious as Matt and it as such a unique character for a sitcom, so clever.

I really do think Game On doesn't get the respect it deserves It was a sitcom that seemed to bridge the gap between old-fashioned-70s and 80s scriptwriters comedy and the new alternative post-modern comedy.

In that what I mean is Game On was a sitcom that was old-fashioned in its' set-up (BBC scriptwriters/ non-comic actors starring/ studio audience filmed) but was part of the zeitgeist of 90's comedies to come (self-written sitcoms by comics such as Steve Coogan,Simon Pegg,Jessica Stevenson.Caroline Aherne,Craig Cash, Dylan Moran and Ricky Gervais to name a few)

Game On came before Alan Partridge,Spaced,The Royle Famiy,Black Books and The Office and Extras) and in some ways looks like part of the older-style of sitcom like Man About The House, Only Fools & Horses etc but- whereas Men Behaving Badly really felt like it belonged closer to OFAH era of scripted- and -edited -by "professional writers" comedy, Game On doesn't because it felt cutting edge like Steve Coogan,Chris Morris,Caroline Aherne,etc etc and yet it's stars weren't comedians (Chaplin,Janus and Cottle) but they were bitingly funny like characters written by young/knowing/ironic and self-mocking comics.
Andrew Davies certainly gave us an iconic sitcom character in Matthew Malone; an agorophobic,paranoid and self obssessed delusional narcissist that was still a lovely and -sometimes- loving character.

In the end when alls' said and done he was bloody funny and Ben REALLY gave him that and it's great credit to him for it.
I only count series one of Game On as the true Game On. To me it still feels like only 6 episdoes were ever made (they are the only 6 episodes I really ever re-watch over the years and I love every minute of every episode of series 1).
What came after feels like a different comedy in a way, enjoyable in it's own way but you really have to forget about Ben (so hard to ) to get through series 2 and 3.
The way I see it is it would've been better if we'd either never seen Ben in the role in the first place then we'd only know Neil in the role and he would've been funny in all 3 series or have had Ben in all 3 series(like us original fans wanted) and it would've been FANTASTIC....
Just imagine those episodes in series 2 and 3 if Ben had've stayed..The plots had got sillier (I mean -come on!- Matthew getting stupider and less reluctant to be macho(the not realising he was acting gay etc etc and the fact Martin became more smarter and Matthew just more foolish) I can;t see Ben Chaplin playing it the way Neil Stuke did but I'm guessing the scripts were tailored to fit Stuke's interpretation of Matthew. I think if Ben stayed the episodes may have been the same but the dialogue and OTT-ness of Matt would've been reigned in and less histionic like Neil was and more subdued and cuttingly fnny like Ben was.












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