As Time Goes By-Series 1 & 2 (1992)

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General		Extras
Category	Drama	Main Menu Audio & Animation Scene Selection Animation
Rating
Year Of Production	1992
Running Time	367:58 (Case: 369)
RSDL / Flipper	Dual Layered Multi Disc Set (3)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Sydney Lotterby
Studio Distributor	Roadshow Home Entertainment	Starring	Geoffrey Palmer Judi Dench Moira Brooker Philip Bretherton Jenny Funnell Joan Sims Frank Middlemas Paul Chapman Moyra Fraser Janet Henfrey David Michaels Tim Wylton
Case	4 Arrow-Triple
RPI	$59.95	Music	None Given

    As Time Goes By is a BBC television series which follows the story of two "mature" citizens who have a brief affair in their youth, and then meet up again 38 years later. Lionel (Geoffrey Palmer) is your classic dry-humoured, cynical, middle-aged man who is in the process of completing a book about his life in Kenya as a coffee planter (imaginatively titled "My Life in Kenya"). Jean (Judi Dench) runs a secretarial business, and Lionel hires one of her secretaries to help with changes to his book, which is how they meet up again in the year 1992.

    When last they met, Lionel was a young officer doing his national service, and Jean was a nurse. They're forced to part when Lionel heads off to Korea in 1954, but he writes to Jean only to have the letter lost in the mail. Jean thinks he hasn't bothered to keep in touch, and both a little heart-broken they continue with their respective lives. Come 1992 and both have since married and become single again - Jean a widow and Lionel divorced.

    So as you can imagine there is a lot of history and clearing up involved in the renewing of their relationship later in life, and these initial 2 seasons cover the early stages of this process. The BBC have seen fit to release both seasons in one package, which I think is a great idea, especially when dealing with a long-running series that you want to collect completely before DVD becomes a fossilized medium. The 13 episodes included are as follows:

• Season 1 Episode 1 (28:47)
  
  We meet Lionel in the hotel he stays at while making changes to his book (the secretarial agency won't send female secretaries to single men's homes). Jean's daughter and employee, Judy (Moira Brooker), is sent over to placate him after the agency initially provided a sub-par secretary. Judy quite likes Lionel and the two go out to dinner, but while picking Judy up at home (where she lives with her Mum) Lionel sees Jean, and old memories are stirred up. They meet up again and sort out what went wrong in the communications department all those years ago, then agree to call each other sometime.


 
• Season 1 Episode 2 (28:18)
  
  Lionel doesn't call Jean and decides to leave the hotel before another secretary is sent round. Jean catches up with him though, and he confesses to getting cold feet due to the fact that Judy is very unsubtly trying to fire up the sparks of romance between her Mum and Lionel. They talk in the park and eventually Lionel asks Jean to accompany him to a party being thrown by his young, smarmy, ultra-PC publisher Alistair (played excellently by Philip Bretherton). They feel very out of place with all the young people, and Alistair tries to clumsily seduce Jean.


 
• Season 1 Episode 3 (29:00)
  
  Lionel and Jean go for a day in the country to revisit their youth, only to find that everything has changed. All Lionel's plans go wrong as the two stumble blindly round the countryside, until they finally arrive at a little hotel that hasn't changed at all, and is where they first spent the night together. Some reminiscing is done over afternoon tea.


 
• Season 1 Episode 4 (29:01)
  
  Lionel is on a lecture circuit, discussing his life in Kenya, and when he heads up to Norwich for a lecture Jean decides to go and see him (at the prompting of Judy). The two meet Alistair on the train, where he again tries to ingratiate himself with Jean, and there are hints that Judy is somewhat taken by him. Meanwhile Lionel, who's unaware that Jean is on the way to Norwich, is boarding with a rather loud lady "friend" whom he stays with whenever in the area. Jean meets her at the lecture, much to Lionel's embarrassment, and tension ensues, followed by some animal activists ruining the lecture. Alistair also makes another failed effort to seduce Jean.


 
• Season 1 Episode 5 (27:50)
  
  Alistair tells Lionel that he must "humanize" his book, since his descriptions of people are too matter-of-fact. Jean sends over her personal secretary, Sandy (Jenny Funnell), to help with the job, but Lionel finds it all a bit too hard. Jean offers to help and they spend an evening sitting and discussing Lionel's past - filling in some gaps. Meanwhile Judy falls for Lionel after he gives her some flattering advice.


 
• Season 1 Episode 6 (26:16)
  
  Alistair gets serious about wooing Jean, and sends her flowers, gorillagrams, and quartets singing at her doorstep. Judy is also making efforts to seduce Lionel, and both of the aged parties are a little flattered by the attention, although they deny it to each other. They agree to go out on a picnic with the youngsters, but only if they all go as a group. Both Lionel and Jean find they aren't as young as they used to be and end up asleep on the grass, while Judy and Alistair go off on a walk together. After they wake up they both agree that they're glad to be back in each others' lives, and end the season with a kiss.


 
• Season 2 Episode 1 (26:39)
  
  The publishing of Lionel's book is getting closer, and Alistair is getting the sales promotion wheels in motion. Lionel, after much protest, is persuaded to do a photo-shoot for the cover, and Jean encourages him to be more agreeable towards Alistair's ideas. She's not quite so happy though when the photo-shoot turns out to include a young, buxom lass dangling round Lionel's legs.


 
• Season 2 Episode 2 (28:08)
  
  Alistair is trying to push Lionel into more and more promotional activity for the book, including improving his image a bit. Judy is heading off somewhere for the weekend, but won't say where, and it turns out that Alistair is also off somewhere for the two days. Jean is immediately suspicious that they're going somewhere together, and also gives Lionel the cold shoulder because she's nervous about him taking advantage of her being home alone for the weekend. Lionel drops round anyway and they sort it out, only to find out Judy just went away on her own to give them some time alone together.


 
• Season 2 Episode 3 (29:28)
  
  Lionel starts to feel his age after a boating trip in the park, and gets morose at the things he can't do anymore. He and Jean go and visit Lionel's father, Richard (Frank Middlemass) - otherwise known as 'Rocky', who turns out to be a lively old spark. He's still a young man at heart and is a complete contrast to Lionel's current mood. It turns out that Richard is getting married again and he tells Lionel that he should marry Jean.


 
• Season 2 Episode 4 (27:38)
  
  Lionel goes through the agonies of buying a suit to help improve his image for the promotion of the book. While doing this he starts to wonder why Alistair actually wants to publish his book, when he knows it's not going to sell very well. Alistair has always said that a publisher needs to release the odd "serious" book to maintain some credibility, but Lionel decides to probe further and discovers that there is actually another reason.


 
• Season 2 Episode 5 (29:03)
  
  Jean and Lionel bump into Jean's overly-talkative sister in law, and they get invited to her house for the weekend. For one reason and another Jean ends up telling the sister in law and her brow-beaten husband a number of lies about Lionel, and their relationship together. In the end, believing that they are actually lovers, the host puts them in the same bedroom, which leads to a lot of awkwardness.


 
• Season 2 Episode 6 (27:56)
  
  After their weekend away, everyone wants to know what "happened" between Lionel and Jean, but the two are tight-lipped. Alistair is still pushing for Lionel to change his image for the imminent book release, including pretending to still be a bit of a ladies' man. To this end he suggests that someone other than Jean should accompany Lionel, just for the release period. Lionel heatedly sticks up for Jean despite her agreeing to the idea, and refuses to go along with it. Jean of course is very flattered.


 
• Season 2 Episode 7 (26:54)
  
  Lionel's "My Life in Kenya" is finally released, but with only moderate sales (despite Jean convincing all her friends to buy a copy, and buying as many as she can herself). Alistair has Lionel gallivanting all over the countryside to promote the book, which of course wears the older man out. In a bid to boost sales Alistair decides on making the dedication of the book, "To Pooh" (which is what Lionel used to call Jean since she liked honey so much), into a bit of a mystery. He plans a huge "Who is Pooh?" campaign, but Lionel puts his foot down and says that it's a private thing between himself and Jean, and not for the whole country to know about. Jean once again is flattered, and the season ends with her and the exhausted Lionel snoozing on the couch together.

 

    Before I'd reviewed this DVD set, I'd never watched a full episode of the series - only a couple of small segments when briefly visiting my parents. I must say now that I'm actually hooked, and waiting impatiently for the rest of the series to be released on Region 4 DVD. When just reading the synopsis of the episodes you could be forgiven for thinking it all sounds a bit boring, complicated, or even sordid (if you think of all the different love triangles and squares that are going on, as well as the age differences). If this had been a US production, that's probably how it would have turned out as well, but when you have the pedigree of the people involved in bringing us this series then you're in safe hands.

    With a director responsible for producing Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em, and Yes Minister, a writer who brought us The Good Life and Please Sir, and actors of the calibre of Judi Dench and Geoffrey Palmer, you can be pretty sure the result is going to be, at the very least, watchable. The humour is gentle, the characters are real, the script is great, and the story is actually quite engaging. The little pokes at the generation gaps that exist today are very insightful, and Lionel's reactions to them, while sometimes cynical, are never actually mean-spirited.

    Although the main pretext for the story is Lionel and Jean somewhat clumsily rekindling their romance, most of the humour is based on them aging, and the way things have changed in society with the problems this can cause for an older generation. I think that's why the series works for a wide audience, because if you're an "older" person then you'll relate exactly to what Lionel and Jean are going through (I think this is the main reason my parents enjoy the programme so much), and as a younger person you can relate to all the weird reactions you've ever gotten over the years from older people.

    There's no one character who really becomes the butt of all the jokes, as the humour is spread out pretty fairly, and even the annoying yuppie Alistair gradually grows on you as a character.

    So if you're looking for punchy one-liners, rude innuendoes, unrealistically glamorous characters, and catch-phrases galore, then look elsewhere. However, if gentle humour, real characters that you become involved with, and clever observations are more your cup of tea, then I recommend you give this series a look.

Video

    The video quality on these DVDs varies depending on the source, but in general is up to the standard you'd expect of this type of production.

    The transfer is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1, which is the way it was originally presented.

    In general the transfer is as sharp and detailed as you could expect from a 10 year old television series, however there are a number of outdoor scenes in season 1 which are shot on film and suffer from significant grain and a lack of sharpness (season 2 is all video footage). There are many examples of this, but a few of the worse ones are at 10:53 and 164:53. Fortunately the vast majority of footage is shot inside, but it does provide quite a contrast when we jump to an outdoor scene. Shadow detail is good, and I didn't notice any low-level noise.

    Colour is also as good as you could expect from a recent production shot on video, with fairly accurate flesh tones, if a little lacking in vibrancy. The outdoor scenes shot on film are quite dull in comparison to the rest of the transfer, but again are a very small minority of shots. There is no bleeding visible, even in some of the brighter primary-coloured clothing, but there is quite a bit of chroma noise visible in the backgrounds of the sets. Examples of this are at 51:56 and 108:18.

    The chroma noise mentioned above does become evident largely due to MPEG compression, and I was quite surprised by the extent of it. With only about 2 hours on each of the 3 discs, I would have imagined that there wouldn't be any issues with compression. I didn't notice any edge enhancement. As you would expect with something of this nature though, there is some aliasing to be seen, mostly evident in the offices which all seemed to have Venetian blinds; 127:16 and 289.03. These are the only obvious culprits though, and aliasing isn't nearly as much of a problem as you might expect. There are the very occasional film artefacts in season 1, but nothing to fuss about.

    There is one set of subtitles on these DVDs; English. I found them not to be too accurate actually, as they were a little lazy in reproducing all relevant words. You generally got the gist of what was being said, but it could have been a lot better.

    These are all RSDL discs, but the layer changes were placed somewhere between the episodes, as you'd hope with discs of this nature.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    This isn't exactly a demo disc, so it's not going to test your home theatre setup at all. It does what it's meant to do though, which is the important thing.

    There is just the one audio track on these discs; English Dolby Digital 2.0.

    Dialogue was very clear and easy to understand, which is the most important thing in a dialogue-driven programme. I'm sure the clarity is helped in no small part by the very well-spoken actors. I didn't notice any problems with audio sync either, as there doesn't seem to have been any ADR work done at all.

    The music is limited to the opening and closing credits' rendition of As Time Goes By, and small cues throughout the episodes. It's certainly not rich in music quantity, but what's there is very appropriate.

    There is no surround activity on this track.

    You can give your subwoofer the evening off as well.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

    It would have been nice to have some extras included with these discs. I'd have especially liked to see some interviews with the cast, but alas it isn't to be.

Menu

    The menus are all presented in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1, and the main menu is animated with the theme tune looping in the background.

    The Region 4 version of this disc misses out on;

• Cast Biographies
• Trailers for Father Ted, Blue Planet, Walking with Prehistoric Beasts and BBC America.

    The Region 1 version of this disc misses out on;

• Nothing

    I was surprised to discover that Region 1 even had this series available on DVD, let alone to find that they have the first 5 seasons already! It seems that they get a slightly better version of the seasons 1+2 set as well, with a couple of extras that we miss out on. From the reviews I could find it seems that there aren't any serious video issues with the PAL-NTSC conversion, and with the current rate of exchange meaning you can get this title from the US for around AU$45 delivered, I'd say the Region 1 version is a very narrow winner.

    If you've never really understood your parents and their reactions to modern life, or if you're a parent who wonders if anyone else sees things the way you do, then this is a gently humorous series that you will most probably enjoy. The BBC once again provide us with a character-driven comedy that doesn't smack you in the face with its jokes, but leaves you smiling nonetheless.

    The video is perfectly adequate.

    The audio is great for what's required.

    Extras are sadly absent.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall