Penhales's Romance: Creepy

I disagree. There's 14-year age difference between the actors playing them and in the show I guess that Janice is supposed to be in her early to mid-twenties and Penhale around 40. I would find it creepy in real life due to the difference in maturity, experience levels and the older party being in the position of power, but it's PC Penhale we're talking about. Even despite her shallowness, Janice is more mature than he is. He seems as mature as those misbehaving 9-year olds in Louisa's school. No normal 40-year old woman would put up with him. In this case age is truly just a number.

I agree that it's a little creepy. Sadly, though, I don't think it's unrealistic.

Apart from the age difference I just didn't understand this coupling at all. They are just so awkward (somehow even more than Martin and Louisa) and it just doesn't work. Then again I don't know who I could see Penhale with.

Young women are quite often attracted to older men, but that she would be attracted to that idiot is a bit hard to swallow.

It's not all that much of an age difference. Listening carefully to some of the background dialogue in Series Seven, it becomes clearer that Janice isn't quite as young as she appears to be. She's a heavily cosmeticised lady pushing thirty (with two failed marriages and a string of buggered-up relationships behind her) who still dresses and behaves as if she were a teenager. It's all an attempt to cling on to her youth, including being friends with the slightly younger Morwenna. Janice is actually quite insecure and lonely.

Penhale is a bit older, but she can see that he genuinely likes her and wants a relationship with her, rather than just trying to get her into bed in the way that the drooling pervy village lads probably try to.

Although Penhale can be a right eejit (something which he is aware of deep down), she understands that he means well. He's a gentle, fairly amenable soul who might not be the brightest button in the world, but then Janice knows that she isn't either. She knows that she can probably make something out of him with some tough love, a bit of a push and a bit of spit and polish. Janice has definitely had worse boyfriend material to work with in the past!

As for it being far fetched, well the series is after all a chirpy rom-com. This genre depends upon suspension of disbelief and outrageous comic contrivances; going all the way back to Greek and Roman farces, and running all the way through Shakespeare and right up to the modern day Richard Curtis rom-coms. Mismatched couples are part and parcel of these stories, with a gooey happy ending the usual standard. Penhale and Janice are no more unlikely a couple than many of the others. It's best just to sit back and enjoy the bumpy ride as they inevitably get it together. It is just sweet, soppy fiction after all.