Waiting for God

"Waiting for God" takes place in the corners of the earth in the Bayview Retirement home. This program goes beyond the normal rules of the sitcom and instead takes television to a new level. This program brings a new light to the treatment of the elderly, religion, the meaning of life, and love. I have never seen such a good TV program, I doubt that I ever will again.

One of the funniest shows to come out of England in the nineties, it has a terrific cast of veteran television and stage players. It's funny and timeless comedy with a bit of slapstick humor and a polished verbal English wit. The wonderful relationship between atheist feminist single Diana and the widowed Tom Ballard is fascinating to watch unlike most relationships, they get better when they're together than apart. Tom's boring son, Jeffrey, can bore anyone to death but he is in a marriage to unfaithful, drunk, and pill popper, Marion, who despises and resents Diana as a threat to their inheritance. The cast includes another heterosexual relationship between old maid plain Jane and the Bayview manager, Harvey Nigel Bains. Harvey constantly mistreats the wonderful sweet Jane. He doesn't know what he's got until he almost loses her. Three great love stories and romances in a wonderful sitcom. The wait is over.

I have been waiting for some time for this to appear on DVD and here it is. Loved it when it first appeared, like it even more now. Diana is a role model, ie just the sort of person I want to be when my children do what they threaten, and put me in a home, and Tom would be an irritating but useful companion. Our bodies may give out on us, but the brain does not always follow suit, and from this we get this glorious programme. Jane, (an undersung hero of UK TV) the long suffering P. A. to the obnoxious Harvey Bains who is the only person to be fooled by his facade of niceness, tries so hard to bring Diana and Tom into some sort of religious salvation before its too late, and plays one of the best characters in the programme. Not to forget the randy little chap (Bas?) who has his own way of enduring old age, and Tom's poor son and his dreadful wife. Truly a TV sitcom of brilliance. More, please!

Here we have a programme centring around two elderly and cynical people in a retirement home located in Britain's version of Florida: Bournemouth. Did I say elderly? Well, only in age, not attitude. Take one Tom Ballard, a gentleman deposited by his son into the retirement home who is one half of the cynical pair. Although cynical, his character expresses this with good humour and resignation, philosophy, and plays upon the ageist attitude that old people are helpless and eccentric, leaving one to wonder whether he is actually mad, or just pretending to be.

The other half, Diana, a worldly woman who sees the effects of society's attitude toward the old now that she is of retirement age and, in contrast to Tom, vents spleen any chance she gets, usually towards Harvey, the young man who runs the Home whose character is a composite of the 20-40 yuppy age group's attitude towards those beyond 65.

The humour is quick-firing, very British, and also pulls no punches with regards to attitudes and observations of society during the latter half of the 80s and into the 90s. All told, an excellent series that will take a long time in the future before it seems dated.

Aging happens to us all. Much to our gratitude and dismay, my wife and I reside in "assisted living", complete with our very own "idiot Baines". In these circumstances the often grim humor of "Waiting for God" often rings true, and nearly always entertains hilariously. We wish it were still in production!