Nothing but Downtime

Mission accomplished. Nothing serious got done over the Christmas holiday except a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle, which H would work on occasionally just to fix my mistakes. I also had a lot of American television on in the background, lots of episodes of Law & Order, Frasier, and Malcolm in the Middle. I also watched all of the episodes of a British comedy called Gavin and Stacey over the holiday as well, thanks to a recommendation from someone at work. I bought the DVDs after Christmas and felt like an addict, waiting for everyone else to go to sleep so I could watch three or four episodes.

The show is a classic tale of two people from different worlds falling in love. Gavin is English and Stacey is Welsh. They meet through telephone conversations at work and decide to meet up in London and a whirlwind romance ensues. They are a sweet couple but the true genius of the show is their family and friends who have to come together with varying degrees of success due to the couples’ romance. I don’t get all of the cultural references but it is still great television. I mention this show because I read recently that it is being developed for American television with Gavin being from New Jersey and Stacey being from South Carolina. While The Office was successfully adapted to U.S. television, I’m afraid the beauty of this one might get lost in the Americanization, so if you have access to the original through BBC America or Netflix, check it out.

I’m attaching a clip from youtube that I hope you can play from America. One of my favorite elements of the show is the relationship between Gavin and his best mate Smithy, who cannot deal with the fact that his friendship is being affected by this relationship. With Gavin and Stacey back from their honeymoon, Smithy acts like the other woman. This scene kills me.