The group reunite at Miles' huge country pad. Egg and Millie are still together, amazingly, but it seems only a pretence; Egg has written a hit novel based on the group. Miles appears successful and remarried but both are a fraud. Warren seems to he running his own business but it's a failure. Anna's only regret is not having a baby; turns out she wants Warren's sperm. Jodie Whittaker films everything.
It was an hour and a half - no wonder everything seemed to take so long.
Fairly cheesy crime / family drama / food thing set in Italy (Croatia). A (police) man, Warren Brown, who's recently lost his (Italian) wife goes back to her home town to visit Nonna and Nonno Phyllis Logan and chef Urbano Barberini, with stupid 17 year old daughter Beau Gadsdon (The Crown) in tow.
I don't mean stupid intellectually, she just picks the worst guy on the (unspecified) island (somewhere near Napoli) to date, and keeps doing stupid things.
Anyway Brown gets involved with local detective Christiana Dell'Anna (Napoli-born, British trained) who grudgingly starts to respect him because he's a bit of a super sleuth, interspersed with Italian cookery lessons.
There's a new case in each 45 minute episode and an over-arching story involving the Gomorrah and Nonno's restaurant.
The last season. Deborah has been branded 'the woman who killed late night', still banned from getting a gig. But announces when the ban's over she will sell out Madison Square Gardens, finds her fans still behind her.
She has a brief fling with a young pop star who turns out to be ridiculously over-sensitive; Ava gets together with a sex worker, but when she finds out he's really into magic (and isn't very goof at it) she goes off him.
Deborah and her daughter (Kaitlin Olson) go on 'The Amazing Race' - cue amusing sequence where they're trying to perform a Mexican routine in clown costume.
Marcus (Carl Clemons-Hopkins) decides to buy a landmark Vegas Casino and refurbish it. Deborah almost makes the mistake of working with an AI entrepreneur who was planning to gather all of her material - realises the mistake she's making.
Jean Hart's changes of expression, and the restrained sarcastic way she says things like 'Oh my God' are wonderful, as is the repartee between her and Hannah Einbinder. Which is tested in the end as Deborah decides she's dying, doesn't want treatment but does want a European holiday with Ava before going to a Swiss clinic.
The style isn't sustainable: everything in close up, whip pans, sudden edits. It's exhausting.
The Pantomime Bitch Queen turns up. Rachel - Natasha Little - is so passively grasping and insinuating we want to shout at her and hurl rotten eggs and fruit at her.
Egg has started work in a café. Millie is so nice to everyone - it's about time she wasn't. Then she has an affair and we go right off her
And Kira is trying to keep Joe at arm's length - will she push him away? Luisa Bradshaw-White was latterly in Eastenders for a mere 693 episodes. Steve John Shepherd was only in it for 314 episodes. We just saw him in the Silent Witness film Discovery - didn't even recognise him! And most recently in both seasons of Karen Pirie!
21 episodes, culminating in Miles marrying despite his wife being ten years older than himself and Egg finding out about Millie's affair (through the Pantomime Bitch, of course). Shame as Millie has finally seen the light about her slimy boss David Mallinson.
Casino manager Michael Socha (fabulously weary and depressed) and employee Sheridan Smith find out each other has been stealing, Socha to repay gambling debts, Smith to try to buy her gran's council house. But they don't realise that the casino's boss's son, Barry Sloane, is using the casino to launder drug money.
Along comes a detective Sophie Mensah who coerces Socha into spying on the son, who himself starts dating Smith. Factor in the errant behaviour of their children and the demented grandmother and you have a merry pudding.
Shaun Mason (Good Cop, Line of Duty, Cilla), Geraldine James, Sue Jenkins and Louis Emerick (both from Brookside).
Tough situations, imperfect people, a little Scouse wit and flavour. A five part series, for a change, for BBC. We did enjoy it, but found it quite plot-holey, e.g. why did the money have to be laundered before going to the coke supplier (make it his problem), and how come Smith hadn't been killed six months later? And - most importantly of all - what prison stretch did Socha end up with?
And - when the Yorkshire police are searching the car, and one copper says 'Are you Scouse?' - I didn't like the implication of that. It was almost 'What have you nicked?'
Some great stuff on the eclectic soundtrack reflects the record collection that Socha (and his brother) have.