No one who fondly recalls ‘90s comedy show The Smell of Reeves and Mortimer could fail to remember Bob Mortimer’s brilliant Ian McShane lampoon, complete with facial crags drawn on in marker pen, strange Native American Indian accent and ridiculous mullet wig. Indeed, McShane’s rogueish antiques dealer in Lovejoy represents one of the decade’s more dated but well-loved comedy-dramas on British TV.
This mammoth 21-disc box set covers all six series of the BBC One show based on Jonathan Gash’s East Anglia-set books about the titular eternal bachelor, his sidekicks, doofus biker Eric (Chris Jury) and veteran alcoholic human encyclopaedia Tinker (Dudley Sutton), along with ongoing will they-won’t they love interest, Lady Jane Felsham (Phyllis Logan).
You know the formula: Lovejoy (we’re never told his first name), is the leader of a rag-tag gang of four who get into all sorts of light-hearted scrapes as they try and turn unrecognized antique finds into quick bucks. Along the way, the list of character actor guest stars who take a turn at getting in Lovejoy’s way in one way or another reads like a who’s who of now-getting-on-a-bit British TV acting talent, including the likes of Brian Blessed, Joanna Lumley, James Nesbitt, Warren Clarke, Roger Lloyd-Pack and Clive Russell.
Of course, Lovejoy himself is a far cry from Ian McShane’s foul-mouthed Wild West anti-hero Al Swearengen, whom many of you will know from HBO’s Deadwood; McShane’s not-quite-loveable rogue is charming, calm, cool and collected, even in the face of gangsters and eight months in prison for a crime he didn’t commit, and is pretty much the definition of Sunday night mainstream TV. This safe, soft-focus treatment of Gash’s somewhat edgier novels works very well as far as it goes.
Watching Lovejoy’s journey from pre-mullet slightly post-watershed antics to the show’s (and the mullet’s) peak in the middle few series, then the inevitable vastly inferior fifth and sixth series (after Eric, Lady Jane and the mullet have all jumped ship) is enjoyable enough in it’s good-natured, knockabout way. Comedy mixed with dramatic moments and some genuinely touching scenes (notably Lovejoy’s statement of devotion to Lady Jane as she walks out of his life) can, and does, make for a decent recipe.
Unfortunately, as many long-running series with the similar cosy setup have shown, ‘comfortable’ can easily become ‘stagnant’ as Lovejoy’s progression unfortunately shows. The same old scenes, the same old close shaves and the same old ‘smug Lovejoy always comes out on top’ predictability ended up crippling the show. By the later series, with the need of a shakeup, the rot wasn’t so much removed as replaced with variations on the same routine. In place of comic relief Eric as the put-upon sidekick, we had comic relief Beth Taylor (played by EastEnders’ Diane Parish) as, you guessed it, the put-upon sidekick. The new love interest, Charlotte Cavendish (Caroline Langrishe) was a stronger variant on the Lady Jane template. And then, more of the same plots.
Still, the mid-period Lovejoy, with the writers and creator Ian La Frenais having hit their creative, humorous stride and with the bulk of the quality guest appearances, is pretty joyful at best, warm and familiar at worst. Perhaps not worth purchasing for anyone other than the die-hard fans (are there many of these?), a better idea may be to snap up Series 2 to 4 for a dose of quaint Middle England fun.
Released on DVD on Monday 29th August 2011 by Revelation Films Ltd.
Watch the DVD trailer…