"This Life" 30 years on

[topcat2014]

Anyone looking forward to this being re shown next week?

I was 17 when it came out. I think it prompted me to go to uni and get a profession so I could live in a share house.

😆😆😆

Brilliant last scene at Miles’ wedding but on the rewatch I thought exactly the same as first time round, Rachel would not of been there! She was someone Miles flirted with a bit and irrelevant to bride and groom. Kiera was more likely to get an invite in her own right (rather than Joe’s plus one) than Rachel!

Finally got to the S1 finale (I’m watching at 90s pace, no binging for me) - what a great messy end for the season! Warren’s awful brother storming out, Millie seeming to draw back from the affair, Egg actually making an effort for his relationship, Anna and Miles stealing away together. You can feel S2’s momentum building up already.

Question for anyone still following the thread - why is there so much horror over Millie/O’Donnell, but hardly anything over Anna/Egg’s dad? The latter is far squickier (poor Egg!), but there’s been barely a peep about it. DH and I were realising it would be like one of us going to visit our kids right now and copping off with one of their peers. I cringed so hard thinking about it I nearly fell off the sofa.

I was thinking the same, God knows how he even qualified!

That was gross too but I guess the difference was that Egg's dad wasn't in a position of power over Anna.

Also Egg's Dad had split up with his wife and Anna was single.

It’s hard to believe that he did any the course, he seemed to have no awareness of what being lawyer would be like!

Anna and the dad were single ( ish ) Eggs dad was probably just getting a bit of revenge on Egg’s mum!
It was icky though.

Agree that how Egg got his degree was a mystery!
He was clever, but it’s odd he didn’t realize how being a lawyer might be as an actual job during that time!!

I agree, not that she wouldn’t have shagged a dad - but that she wouldn’t have shagged that dad.

Interestingly, Daniela Nardini has since said that she was certain Anna would have shagged a dad; but one who was a bit more Harrison Ford and a bit less Baldrick (no offence to either actor).

I think the creators would have happily had another series but the bbc was too slow to commission so there was no way of keeping or getting all the actors available for flumpence.

Just found this thread!

I wasn't old enough to watch it in the 90s but the repeats before the +10 episode were on late at night when I was at uni so I watched them then. I had the DVDs but don't have anything to play them on anymore so haven't seen it in a few years.

It hasn't aged too well but I still love it, still love Egg (even though he is a man child), still "would" with Andrew Lincoln (I discovered him in Teachers in the early 2000s - he's basically Egg but a teacher) and still haven't forgiven Milly.

There's an interview with Daniela Nardini in the Guardian today https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2026/may/19/daniela-nardini-interview-anna-this-life-now-therapist

I read that yesterday. Fascinating

@topcat2014DN sounds like a really interesting character. Anna is a fairly rare complex female character in a TV show from the 90s.

I was in my late teens when I watched it and loved it- especially Anna! It did capture the mood of the time. Not seen it since but this thread is making me want to watch it.

Late to the thread, but I've just binged this after rewatching the first episode for old time's sake. When it first came out I was roughly the same age as the cast and living in a similar house share and it felt so modern and zeitgeisty. Watching it now, it feels like a period drama - all the little details, the smoking, the CDs, the shared bathroom, no possibility of working from home so you have to go into the office, the absence of mobile phones or Xboxes so there is far more interaction among the people in the house than there would be today (each with their own ensuite no doubt!). And of course the soundtrack which is the soundtrack to my twenties. It made me hugely nostalgic. The producers of This Life have taken that time and set it in aspic. As I was watching I realised that for me, watching it now is the equivalent of my younger self watching Brief Encounter. My youth is now the olden days. It's rather sobering!

The season 2 final scene was one of the best endings to a show I could imagine…felt very satisfied after that! Warren walking back into total chaos and everyone unravelling…I watched it back a few times it made me laugh so much. The +10 was pretty awful…not where I wanted those characters to end up. They should have left it at the season 2 climax.

Character-wise, I hated Anna at the start, but loved her by the end. Adored Egg in 1996 and despised him in 2026…every time he came on in the rewatch I got annoyed with him for being so self absorbed. Millie I thought was boring but nice…until she started picking on Rachel then went right off her. Miles…I know so many people like Miles from my London post-uni days. Also had more tolerance for him on my initial 1990s watch then in the 2026 rewatch. Ferdy grew on me on series 2 and I went from disliking him to having a soft spot by the end of S2. I’m fascinates to find out how he died but I did kind of like the fact that he and Warren got back together again. Warren was my favourite character…I could have easily been friends with him and thought he aged rather better than the rest in 10+. Joe and Kira, I adored…I hope they stayed together.

I’m still mulling over how differently I viewed the characters now compared to how I did then. I also noticed how some characters who were quite nuanced in S1 (Miles, especially) became much less likeable in S2, or sometimes the other way around (Egg, Anna). I missed Warren, though Ferdie made for great drama.

I enjoyed (not “liked”) Millie more. I thought her very female brand of passive-aggressive competitiveness and perfectionism was very well drawn. Her warm relationship with clever but chaotic Anna was a good contrast to how threatened she was by Rachel. On paper, she and Rachel should have got on together in the boy’s club of 90s law, but for all her feminism Millie was too busy trying to be the best to be “sisterly” - which really rang true with me. I’ve worked with a few Millies!

I hadn’t even remembered the Jo and Keira storyline! Couldn’t believe how invested I got in them this time round. And speaking of Keira, I miss that element of the workplace, I have to say. Every office used to have a dozen Kieras livening the place up. The ones who stayed and progressed were knew EVERYTHING. Getting in with the admins was always how you got to find out what was really going on!