Cold Feet review, series 8: Beginning to show its age

The old gang are back – again – but the frailties of middle age make for more mordant TV than the mishaps of youth

Left to right: Robert Bathurst, Hermione Norris, James Nesbitt, Faye Ripley and John Thomson (ITV)

Cold Feet (ITV), in case you’re too young to know, was invented in the 1990s as a sort of British version of American shows such as Friends and Thirtysomething. Sensing that there was no real equivalent on this side of the Atlantic, writer Mike Bullen created Cold Feet. It did much more than merely transplanting the broken hearts and comedies of errors from Manhattan and Philadelphia to Salford or Worsley, however, and enjoyed enormous and much-deserved success. There was an obvious demand for it, and it made stars of its cast.

Well, they’re back. Or rather, they’re back again: Cold Feet rebooted in 2016, after it had been off our screens for some 13 years. Now in its eighth series, it is still written by Bullen, and with the median age around 50, the characters are mostly coping with the challenges of middle age. They could have called it Fiftysomething I suppose, the decade of routine screening appointments with the GP and supermarket staff pressing the “obviously over the legal age” option when you buy a bottle of Rioja.

Thus, lovable Pete and Jenny (John Thomson and Fay Ripley) are still re-united, so to speak. Still rutting, too, to the extent that Pete thinks Jenny’s pregnant again even as she approaches the menopause, because her boobs have got bigger. They are the one blissfully happy couple still coupling, with an apparently sane teenage kid – such a blessing – but their blissful existence is soon threatened by the lump the doctor found on her bust. It was all handled expertly, but I found it a bit unnerving to be honest, as might most viewers who happened to be in the same demographic as the Cold Feeters. I suppose that the frailties of older age are just that bit more mordant than the mishaps of youth – and require more medical attention.

James Nesbitt, who probably did best out of the original shows as Adam, is still looking good, but has grown into a lonely figure, desperately using “product” on his hair and trying it on with women half his age (and he applies a hefty discount to that on Tinder). There is a story line about him trying to pick up a 22-year-old barista at his local coffee shop, whose flirty service he mistakes for burgeoning affection. When she (Tala Gouveia) does arrive on his front doorstep – big romantic surprise! – she’s there because his son has invited her round for dinner. Because she’s going out with the son.

Of course it’s silly, almost Shakespeareanly so, but they made it work. In an angry confrontation with his son Matthew (Ceallach Spellman), who gets dumped as a result of Adam’s randy manoeuvrings, Adam pleads that he didn’t know that the barista was Matthew’s girlfriend. The response: “The fact that she could be was what makes it wrong. The fact that she was makes it worse.” He call Adam “sad and pathetic”, and I’ve rarely seen the usually highly animated Nesbitt features looking quite so deflated.

Robert Bathurst (David) and Hermione Norris (Karen), the Marsdens, are still in there, friends rather than partners, and Bathurst is as good as ever as a sort of alternative Bill Nighy. And there’s Ramona (Jacey Sallés), too, the Spanish ex-nanny to David’s child, who gets married and separated in the space of the first twenty minutes. Her name is always pronounced “Remoaner”, although that may be me hearing things.

I didn’t really like the first, badly laboured joke of the episode, in which she declares she is “marrying a cont”, meaning a Spanish count. The wedding scenes were beautifully and lavishly shot, but it seemed quite a length to go to for a pretty poor pun – a low point as bad as anything in Mrs Brown’s Boys, the Mariana Trench of current comedy. By comparison, the later set-piece scenes where David, Adam and, especially, Pete rescue a drowning man from a canal by administering CPR while singing “Staying Alive” was much better executed, and didn’t require aerial filming. Watching the three friends resuscitating a body close to death was, come to think of it, an accidental metaphor for the whole show.

So, very much like the actors propping it up and its dad’s army of original fans, Cold Feet is showing its age: a little arthritic, occasionally losing its way. Nothing too serious, but just a few irritating and painful moments.