Never the Twain

Oh dear, 'Never the twain' has not aged well. I caught some re-runs on a late night channel recently and was embarrassed by the predictable story-lines and poor acting. The characters are stereotypes and most of the actors resort to spluttering and pulling faces in order to elicit laughs. The writing is generally uninspired and the jokes are juvenile and not particularly funny. A sample of the dialogue: Oliver Smallbridge: "I started at the bottom, you need brains there." Simon Peel: "Well, your brains are in your bottom." It provided work for several British B-list actors over a number of years but, apart from that, there's little to recommend it. One wonders how Donald Sinden ever became involved in the series.