"This Life" 30 years on

[topcat2014]

Anyone looking forward to this being re shown next week?

Worst thing about my first mobile was the fact it didn’t store the texts , so no idea what you had typed! Very basic.

I can't remember when I first got one. It would have been about 2000, I think.
I've still got the same number.

I can remember it being about 1995 or 96, and people would phone me from their mobile and it was a PITA because I was tethered to a landline while they'd be entertaining themselves walking home from somewhere.

A friend’s husband had a very big mobile phone around 1990. Didn’t work inside a car and cost loads for one call. It looked ridiculous and everyone thought it was funny as looked liked a yuppy banker type and he wasn’t!

I've just finished watching the whole thing for the first time. Anna was such an influential character, we've seen a lit more women like Anna that don't fit in a convenient box since that time.
I disagree with a lot that has been said about Egg. I think he was a creative type who had accidentally ended up on a corporate path and just struggled a bit to find the right direction after that. I think that scenario is a lot more common now, with multiple career changes as we adapt to new technology etc. Once he did get a job at the cafe he worked hard, and became an entrepreneur. He probably had ADHD as well! Basically I related to Egg because I went into accountancy after uni and hated it, so I could really see where he was coming from!
Also did not love the reunion, I wish Kira and Joe had got a spin off

I've just finished watching the whole thing for the first time. Anna was such an influential character, we've seen a lit more women like Anna that don't fit in a convenient box since that time.
I disagree with a lot that has been said about Egg. I think he was a creative type who had accidentally ended up on a corporate path and just struggled a bit to find the right direction after that. I think that scenario is a lot more common now, with multiple career changes as we adapt to new technology etc. Once he did get a job at the cafe he worked hard, and became an entrepreneur. He probably had ADHD as well! Basically I related to Egg because I went into accountancy after uni and hated it, so I could really see where he was coming from!
Also did not love the reunion, I wish Kira and Joe had got a spin off

Funnily enough i have just watched am episode of Brookside from 1990 this morning Max Farnham has a huge mobile phone
And he said it cost him 40 pence,everytime he tried to ring home and no one answered
They have also just bought thrmselves a fax machine and are delighted with.it.

I am a lawyer - but I never watched this at the time. I’m catching up with it now with my husband (who has watched it before).

I am really enjoying it - they had legal consultants on the show and (if you allow for obvious dramatic licence) I think it shows. I do chuckle to myself at lines like O’Donnell saying something to Millie about their client - something like “Oh you know what businessmen are like!”

Oh yeah, those old businessmen. 😂 you’d call them entrepreneurs or whatever or refer to their industry. Not just “businessmen” 😂

I think that’s what actors and creatives think about many people who have “proper jobs”. They’re just “businessmen”.

Also absolutely LOVE the dynamic between Kelly and Kira on reception and O’Donnell having to repeatedly haul them into his office to give them headmasterly tickings off/act as mediator.

Do you remember back when Time Out regularly referred to ordinary office job-types as “Suits?” It was one of their ways of describing what a bar or pub was like, whether it attracted Suits after work or not. (Now fewer people wear suits ubiquitously, and fewer head straight to the pub on Thursday and Friday nights…)

@RayonSunrise yes I do remember that! I used always to have a copy of time out with me!

I thought I was so cool with my Time Out.

A copy of Time Out on the tube, my massive brick of a Nokia phone and a powder blue trouser suit from Next. Loved the 90’s

Time out was so trendy.
All the women’s hair styles are annoying , Kira and her clips, Millie and her (push the hair out of her eyes constantly ) hair style. Ferdy has lovely hair though! Looks glossy. Lennies hair was like Mick Hucknells.

I also loved all the 90s details that were just normal at the time. Like finding out by letter that you'd got a job! I'm sure I can remember my first couple of jobs being offered by later in the 00s, seems so archaic now.

Letters were big business for so long. The agony of finding out if you had a job offer by letter , love letters from boyfriends, pen pal letters , letters from the bank the Royal mail was actually good and delivered on time and it was good value. Nothing like it is now.

And of course, the graveyard of buried hopes that was Second Post. The things you were expecting never arrived in Second Post but it allowed you a few more hours of hoping for it.

Our only postal delivery now turns up about when second post used to!

Better for dramas too, there were so many good suspenseful storylines that just wouldn't work now because everyone would be asking 'why don't they just email/text?'.

I loved This Life the first time round - found Milly and Egg intensely irritating, basically watched it for Anna (massive girl-crush), Miles and Warren - and found it just as good on rewatching.

I read that they don’t really do a second post anymore , even though you can buy the stamps and send things second class. Not sure where I saw this ( it was a while ago ) but they also admitted in the article they prioritize parcels as more money in that than letters and cards.
Paying for large letter stamps wind me up as some cards are just over and they are not cheap.

I do like Anna too. She really has the best lines and her breakdown when her mum died was very good.
I haven’t seen them all yet, but I did dip into the ten year anniversary one and I need to watch the rest of that too. I’ll miss it when I have seen them all.

A few ended up in Eastenders. Kira was Tina Carter ( died) Jo was Michael Moon ( died ) and one of the ones who they interviewed for Warren’s room was Masood and Ferdy played a dad for a while ( but I don’t remember the character , it was a while ago)
You can see where Ricky Gervais got the idea for the office too , as so much is set in the office and he did the music on the show.

Does anyone remember when O'Donnell got punched. Literally one punch but his face had the blackest most ridiculously over the top bruise afterwards. It irrationally annoyed me at the time. And evidently still does now!

No, they don't, but it was always a misconception that second class = second post. You were more likely to get first class mail in the second post because they tried to deliver first class mail the next day - if it missed the first post of the day, it would go out in the second post whereas second class could wait for the following day's post.

It's interesting if you ever read messages on the back of antique postcards from the days when there was a third delivery, in the evening - people would send postcards in the morning arranging to meet that same evening, obviously confident it would arrive in the evening post!

is the 30 years on episode on iPlayer? I can only find the 10 years on one.

I can only find the 10 year one as well. Is the 30th not out yet ?

And Milly and Ferdy were in the Bill, at the same time I think.