OK - Updates + Quotes That You May Not Have Seen

Firstly, i see that amazon.co.uk have finally put up a picture of the sleeve of the two series together (though there are no images for the seperate Series 2 and they are using the old edition of Series 1 as the picture for that).

Now, my eye-sight isn´t the best, but I think it says ´5 Disc Set´ on the cover. I was a little disappointed but not really surprised by this, as amazon and play.com (i think) have advertised the product as a 7 disc edition for the past couple of months. I remember thinking that unless they were really spacing the epsisodes out over several DVDs, as well as giving us a shed-ful of extra features (wishful thinking I know) there was no need for it really. I´m squinting looking at the picture and can´t make it out for definite, but i´m pretty sure it says ´5 Disc Set´. I´d be happy to be proved wrong...as long as it isn´t less than 5 obviously.

Seeing as there´s been a lot of speculation over whether there will be a comeback special, I tried to fish out some quotes from the horses´ mouths - in this case Amy Jenkins, Andrew Lincoln and Jason Hughes. I can´t for the life of me remember where the quotes from the two cast members are, or what I had to wade through in google and yahoo to read them but to paraphrase, Andrew has said in an interview that all the cast met up for a dinner in the summer for the first time since they went their seperate ways. I don´t recall reading him say anything about a reunion, though I suppose it´s fair to say that it was more than likely mooted at the get-together.
Jason was quizzed on the matter by a Welsh paper in August or September I think, and he seemed up for working with the cast again. He mentioned the somewhat important(!) matter of all cast members being free at the same time before anything could be done. Again, he didn´t give the impression that anything concrete was afoot as of yet.

Finally, a couple of articles from September last - the first with some of those ´interesting quotes´ mentioned, from Amy Jenkins, the second an interesting article by the woman herself on what has become of the twenty-somethings generation of a decade ago.




Outstanding! This Life is set to be born again

It helped to define a decade. Now the classic Nineties drama is returning to our screens

David Smith
Sunday September 11, 2005
The Observer


It began with the line, 'Out there is chaos', told to a therapist. It ended with a punch thrown on the dancefloor and the simple commentary, 'Outstanding!' In-between was a groundbreaking drama about a group of twentysomething lawyers whose stormy lives and loves reflected their decade, the Nineties. But how will they fare in the Noughties?
This Life, the still lamented cult television series, is set for a comeback. Its creator and principal writer, Amy Jenkins, has met members of the cast to discuss a one-off special to mark the BBC show's 10th anniversary next year. For nostalgic fans, many of whom have themselves left their twenties behind, the prospect raises tantalising questions about the fates of Anna, Miles, Milly, Egg and Warren, who shared a house in London. Audiences will be eager to learn not only whether Miles's marriage to Francesca has lasted against the odds but who among the other characters - gay or straight - has found domestic bliss and who has been left on the shelf.

Jenkins, now 38, is hopeful that all the actors will be available to reprise their roles despite the success This Life brought them. They were comparative unknowns when the 32 episodes were shown on BBC2 in 1996 and 1997. But Jack Davenport (who played Miles) has since appeared in the TV comedy Coupling and had roles in The Talented Mr Ripley and Pirates of the Caribbean. Andrew Lincoln's (Egg) career has blossomed in the TV series Teachers and the film Love Actually. Daniela Nardini (Anna) has starred in various TV dramas and the recent film Festival. Amita Dhiri (Milly) has featured in TV dramas such as Happiness and Second Generation, while Jason Hughes (Warren) has appeared in a number of films.

Jenkins was approached to write the comeback special by Tony Garnett of World Productions, which made the original series, after the idea was put to him by the BBC. She said: 'I met the cast a few weeks ago and it was like a school reunion. They all looked the same. If we make it we'll have to draw lines on their faces to age them."

The writer said negotiations were still in the very early stages and she had not yet decided what lies in store for her creations. 'As far as I know it's not a done deal, and I haven't started writing yet. But it would be fun to see what has happened to the characters. My one idea so far is that Warren has been on a reality TV show. It looks as if all the actors will come back; if not, saying one of the characters had died would have been a possibility.'

When she created This Life, Jenkins set out to chronicle a generation which was the first who could not expect to do better than their parents, could not afford to buy property, found it very hard to get a job and were unabashed about casual drug use. She wished to reflect a new cynicism about relationships because so many had seen their parents split up. Her flawed heroes were 'not afraid to swear, take drugs, have lots of sex and watch lots of football'.

The series thrived on the high drama and emotion of these young professionals' personal lives. It hooked audiences like a soap and shocked conservative critics with its bad language and candid depictions of drug taking, drunkenness and explicit sex, including taboo-breaking gay sex. The Daily Mail pronounced itself 'appalled at the drugs, booze and, worst of all, simulated sex between homosexuals'.

It was also made in a groundbreaking style, popularised by American shows such as NYPD Blue, of multiple camera cuts, jerky movements and tight editing with pithy dialogue. This Life had begun without fanfare but gradually become a cult hit with final viewing figures of more than four million. When it was taken off air after just two series, many were left wanting more. Jenkins added: 'Tony Garnett always said it should be something people discover for themselves, which can be risky in case they never do, but in this case it worked. People felt it wasn't shoved down their throats.

'It was quite different at the time and we've sort of forgotten about that. I don't claim credit for being original, I just stole it from American TV. There has been a change in our TV drama since, for example series like Shameless.'

A spokeswoman for the BBC said last night: 'It's in the very early stages of development. The script would have to be right and we need to get the actors together. Everyone is very excited and there's an extraordinary amount of interest already.'

Ten years on...what's the plot?

Has Miles (Jack Davenport), the selfish, good-looking and privileged one, married the wrong woman? Will he ever get over his love-hate relationship with Anna (Daniela Nardini), the sharp-tongued, sassy Scot who is determined to become a barrister and escape her impoverished past at any cost?

Has Egg (Andrew Lincoln), the Manchester United-obsessed beer drinker, found his true vocation? Will he and Milly (Amita Dhiri), his ambitious solicitor girlfriend (the uptight one who takes lots of baths) ever be reconciled, now that the manipulative Rachel revealed to Egg her suspicions of Milly's infidelities with boss O'Donnell

Has Warren (Jason Hughes), the gay refugee from a small town in Wales, come out to his parents? We must be told.
Isabelle Chevallot






What the This Life generation did next

Amy Jenkins
Monday September 12, 2005
The Guardian


Ten years ago I met the veteran TV producer Tony Garnett. He wanted to put together a new drama show that would pull in younger viewers to BBC2 and he asked me about my life. I said it seemed to me that previous generations had always expected to do better than their parents. But not mine.
The sixties baby-boomers were cool, rich and mosturised. They were never going to get old. The Beatles were unbeatable, the Stones were still stoned. Word of mouth had it that a lowly media job opportunity elicited 2,000 applications. All the cheap houses in soon-to-be-fashionable areas were gone. How were we ever going to get on?

The answer - in This Life anyway - was to bitch and moan, dance, take drugs, lie on the sofa, have a lot of sex, go to therapy, talk too much and generally gaze at the navel. And then that turned out to be "getting on" anyway and 10 years later, of course, we find ourselves in a generation that has grown up despite itself and rather to its own surprise.
Back then the old fogey critics said of This Life: "Why would we be interested in such selfish people?" But "selfishness", if you would call it that, turned out to be the key. Now the Me Generation is the establishment. The therapy, post-ecstasy, 9/11, Bridget Jones, Blair generation turned navel-gazing into big business.

So we live in a world where it seems routine that fire fighters who attended the Twin Towers should receive counselling for PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder). And if we don't go to actual therapy ourselves, we get it from problem busters such as Super Nanny on nightly sort-yourself-out TV. We may not take much ecstasy any more, but who needs it when they've got Prozac, yoga and mega-dose vitamin C? Thirtysomething women worry they can't get a man, but only as cover for the fact that their jobs and Chardonnay swilling girls-nights-out come first. Marriage, like real life, begins at forty. We've even got a prime minister who has presided over an economic boom while famously rising to the occasion of Diana's death, offering healing words to a nation bereft. He has also undeniably had sex while in office - once at least.

We gaze at navels in this belly-button showing world of our creation (the slimmer of us expose them literally), ours and everyone else's too. We are the access-all-areas generation. The postmodern obsession with going behind the scenes (in every sense) has spawned cultural phenomena such as Big Brother, Heat magazine, Tony Soprano, 12-step mania, Venus and Mars (et al), mobile phone cameras, the world wide web and even ME, its own eponymous disease. And if this generation have kids then, of course, they've got to have dyslexia or ADD.

Those critics that asked why they'd be interested in selfish people didn't get This Life and I, in all honesty, didn't get their question. I was only interested in people who were interested in themselves.

My original This Life pitch for the BBC talks about "the politics of the individual and of intimate relationships". For example, I remember I believed - and still do - that the only way to "crack down" on crime was to tackle the very emotional problems of addiction and low self-esteem. And that philosophy translated into Anna, Miles and the rest being so unapologetically self-involved.

Analyse this. We had the time to do it, I suppose. Ten years ago the world's problems weren't ours, they were the problems of another generation. Margaret Thatcher and her progeny definitely weren't anything to do with us. The atom bomb wasn't showing any sign of dropping. The Berlin wall had been destroyed more by McDonald's than missiles, crumbling in the inevitable march of benevolent capitalism. Enviromental issues were heating up but not yet at the boil. There wasn't anything to march about. There wasn't much to do.

Perhaps, now that we've got *beep* of our very own (buzz words: Bush and bombs and terror) we can relax our pursuit of self at last. Perhaps, after all, that's what growing up is.

· This Life is reported to be returning to our screens this Christmas.
(hmmm, that last foot-note was a tad optimistic eh?!)


Taking all this into account (and again, apologies for not being able to dredge up the Andrew & Jason quotes - I really should have bookmarked the pages!), I would imagine if (or as it encouragingly looks, when) ´This Life´ returns, it wont be for a while yet - between a year and 18 months is probably a reasonable guess, which (if the latter) would fittingly enough take it up to almost exactly 10 years since that famous last epsiode aired.

As a huge fan of the show, and having only the bbc online news-story from last July to go on - which only contained quotes from a beeb press-officer, it was worth tracking down those bits of news, especially the quotes from Amy Jenkins in the Observer article.

Something for those of us doubting a return to feel hopeful of anyway! And only a few weeks til the release of the DVDs! :)

(I have a life outside of this one, outside of ´This Life´ I mean, honest...)