"Rachel, it's no longer the 19th century. We're allowed to ask them to dance." - Karen Marsden (Hermione Norris) on dating
Cold Feet: Pilot and Complete 1st Series DVD Review
By A.J. Carson
Adam Williams (James Nesbitt, Waking Ned Devine) has a social disease: unable to commit to any one relationship for more than three months, he suffers from a nearly incurable case of cold feet. He even dumped his last girlfriend because she liked the pop band Wet Wet Wet. But one day, he runs into someone special. Literally. When pulling out of his parking space at a grocery store in his Manchester neighborhood, he backs into a Mini Cooper driven by Rachel Bradley (Helen Baxendale, best known in the US for playing Ross' fiancée Emily on Friends). Can these two overcome Adam's commitment phobia and embark on a fulfilling relationship? Maybe, provided Rachel can get over her old boyfriend and...ahem...her not-quite-ex-husband.
Pete Gifford (John Thomson) is Adam's best friend. He and his wife, Jenny (Fay Ripley), are working at having a baby. Well, Jenny is doing most of the work. She feverishly keeps track of her fertility cycle and plans, down to the minute, exactly when the conditions should be ideal for the couple to have sex. Pete goes along with the plan, but deep down he wonders if he is ready to be a father.
Karen Marsden (Hermione Norris), Rachel's closest friend, already has a baby. The trouble is that she fears the baby is all she has. Her husband, David (Robert Bathurst), is a workaholic who never seems to be at home. She resents that her husband slavishly works long hours while she has had to give up her job as a book editor. David insists that a nanny is out of the question because he does not want their child raised by a stranger. Karen feels that he is already a stranger, reminding him that "parenting is not something you can fax from the office." They love each other, but they've somehow forgotten why.
As this set's packaging reminds us, Cold Feet is often compared to Friends. The series' tone and style more closely resemble a mix of Coupling and thirtysomething. The jokes are less sex-based than those in Coupling, but the general feeling is the same. In many ways, Cold Feet is like an exploration of the Coupling pals at a slightly later stage in their lives. Asking an eighteen-year-old neighbor what she would think of him if she saw him in a club, Adam is thoroughly depressed with her guileless reply: "I'd think you were coming to pick up your daughter." Sometimes the humor can be downright wacky, as in episode six's catfight between David's haughty American boss and Jenny - a rollicking brawl that makes those on Dynasty look tame. Inspired by meeting a famous author, Adam decides to revisit a novel that he tried writing when he was in his early twenties. In a gag worthy of The Simpsons, the locomotive-obsessed manuscript turns out to be titled Trainspotting.
But while the series is funny, it contains a generous amount of soapy drama that would have been right at home on thirtysomething. Yes, you will laugh at Cold Feet, but there are also moments that will leave you close to tears. Pete's combative relationship with his father is mined for laughs ("I love my dad. I just can't stand him"), but it is also tragic. Despite their witty banter, each couple has serious communication problems. Outwardly, Pete and Jenny seem to be the happiest. Yet minor events throughout the first series suggest that Jenny is not content in their relationship, even if she doesn't fully realize it. And just try to remain emotionally distant in the final episode, when Adam proposes to Rachel in an elaborately planned ceremony at a fancy restaurant. Adam is rightly thrilled by this momentous event, but because we are privy to more information about Rachel than he is, we know that his joy will be short-lived.
Truth be told, little in Cold Feet is original. A madcap dash to the hospital at the birth of a baby. A character accidentally drinking expressed breast milk. A nanny who doesn't quite speak English. None of this is virgin territory - we've seen it all before in other series and movies. And yet somehow, it doesn't matter. Even at its most familiar, Cold Feet remains romantic, moving, and absorbing. The characters are so finely drawn that it is easy to overlook the slightly tired situations in which they often find themselves. Adam is such a closet romantic that after losing Rachel's phone number, he hangs out at the supermarket all day hoping to see her again. Rachel seems blandly perfect, but she harbors a number of secrets. David wants to be a more hands-on father, so he reads his son the stock reports. Even when the characters are treacherous (as when Karen comes close to having an affair), they are still sympathetic.
The actors are uniformly terrific. Fay Ripley, however, is a standout as Jenny. She is simultaneously earthy, droll, and flirtatious: a pleasant combination of Penny Marshall and Catherine Keener. She has a way of cleverly twisting even the mildest of lines into a scene-stealing bit.
Cold Feet proved to be so popular in Britain that NBC premiered an Americanized version starring David Sutcliffe (Gilmore Girls) and Jean Louisa Kelly (Yes, Dear) in September 1999. American audiences were less enthusiastic, and the series was cancelled one month later.
The pilot episode and the six episodes that make up the first series are divided onto three discs. The discs are housed in three standard-sized keepcases which slide into a cardboard slipcover. The back of each keepcase includes brief synopses of the episodes found on the DVD.
The menus are simple and functional. The opening montage from the start of episode one plays on a continuous loop in a small window. Viewers can choose to watch an entire episode or can jump directly to a scene using the "Scene Selection" menu.
