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Goodnight Sweetheart: The Complete Series One
01/09/2005 . Source: Geoff Willmetts 
DVD. Revelation PAR61253. Price: £15.99 (UK). 6 episodes plus extras. 230 minutes)stars: Nicholas Lyndhurst, Dervla Kirwan, Mitchelle Holmes, Victor McGuire, David Ryall and Christopher Ettridge and assorted others. Written by Laurence Marks and Maurice Gan. Buy Goodnight Sweetheart in the USA - or Buy Goodnight Sweetheart in the UK  check out website: www.revfilms.com
This series should be of interest to SF fans for many reasons although chiefly it's a time travel series with comedy over-tones. We've seen such things happen in our Science Fiction all the time. What makes 1993 series 'Goodnight Sweetheart' unique was it wasn't exactly written by pro SF writers or fans. Neither writers Laurence Marks or Maurice Gan in their 50 minute interview or six audio commentaries don't even have a passing interest in the genre other than as a means to get television repairman Gary Sparrow into 1940s London. They just saw it as a good idea to be exploited. Oddly enough, they applied themselves in a way that SF writers would in coming to terms of how they would deal with the situation that brought this series to life and turned it into a comedy drama..
In some respects, this series is also a time capsule back to 1993. For that 'present' time, you see the old-fashioned brick telephones, the lack of the Internet, the use of videos - all right, we still have them - and other such things that could make this slightly unreal to a new generation, especially if they don't know the time period references. I find a little unreal to think season one is over 12 years old now myself.
As Marks and Gan remind us, the story is really one of adultery or at least for these six episodes, attempted adultery. What allows the story to work is that it's done over two different time periods. Gary Sparrow walks down Duckett's Passage and arrives in the Blitz. His green overalls don't look out of place and it takes a while for him to realise he's in the past and not in a theme pub. If you have ever been in such a place and have to duck down into the cellars to avoid being bombed, get a little worried.
Gary Sparrow also becomes involved with the local barmaid, Phoebe, and spends time regularly in the past. As his present time buddy Ron reminds him in a later episode: he has all the makings of an untraceable affair. 'Course, nothing runs to order and Gary has to explain his relative time apart from his wife Yvonne.
What I like about this series is that it does address the kind of problems you would encounter when arriving in a different time period and in later seasons, it doesn't back away from it neither as with the distribution of fake money in the past caused by our time traveller. Season two is coming out end of September so its best to start with this one. The audio commentaries are dry humoured but give a lot of insight as to what goes on creating a series so worth having a listen in on. It's worth having on your shelf as well as in your DVD player.
GF Willmetts
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