Three's company: Elizabeth Carling, Nicholas Lyndhurst and Emma Amos in the film «Goodnight, Love» Photo: Neil Genover
Bi- The BBC didn't do this. I don't understand the 1990s time travel sitcom Goodnight Love. At least not at first. Series creators Laurence Marks and Maurice Grahn pitched it to the BBC's head of comedy as «the story of a man who is in love with two women, one of whom is probably eighty but may be dead.» To which the BBC man was forced to admit: “Look, I just don’t get it… Is this going to be funny?” When Marx and Grandma assured him that «Goodnight, Love» would indeed be funny, he said, «Okay, make it six.»
Marx and Granny, who also wrote The New Statesman and Birds of the Same Feather, admit to having a little fun at the comedy chef's expense. «Because we knew the BBC had no choice but to pay us to write the script — that was the nature of our deal — I decided to be a little cheeky,» says Grahn, speaking via Zoom with Marks, his longtime writing partner. .
The BBC's initial confusion is not surprising. Thirty years later, Goodnight Love is still a strange premise: Nicholas Lyndhurst is a time-traveling adulterer – and eventual bigamist – who bounces between his current wife and his barmaid mistress in a Blitz-era East End. «I think it's the strangest idea in the history of television,» Marks admits.
Lyndhurst is now back on TV, playing the professor in Paramount's reboot of Frasier. The left-wing cast prompted reactions like: “Bonnet de douche! Rodders from Only Fools and Horses in Fraser? Indeed, Lyndhurst never eluded the 42-carat destroyer Rodney Trotter. However, Goodnight Sweetheart was his biggest success outside Nelson Mandela House. It had a peak audience of 13.5 million viewers and ran for 59 episodes — just five episodes short of The Trotter Clan.
The Time Traveler's Wife (and Lover): Goodnight Love Lyndhurst played an adulterer in two different time periods. Photo: Fremantle Media/Shutterstock
The idea for «Goodnight Love» came from a spontaneous remark. At the time, Marks and Granny were writing the romantic comedy drama Love Hurts, which starred Adam Faith and Zoe Wanamaker. “We were writing a scene about the characters meeting in the East End,” Grahn recalls. “And Lawrence said magically: “Did you know that there are streets in the East End that haven’t changed much since the Blitz?” And I answered: “This is a series.”
This evolved into the story of TV repairman Gary Sparrow. Depressed by the mediocrity of his marriage to Yvonne (Michelle Holmes), who dreams of becoming ambitious, he accidentally falls into a time portal in an East End alley that transports him back to 1940. Stumbled upon the Royal Oak, a proper pub on Columbia Road. in Bethnal Green — Gary falls in love with Phoebe (Dervla Kirwan), whose husband is fighting away. Back in 1993, Gary's pal Ron (Victor McGuire) helps Gary lead a double life by printing menstrual money and documents such as card books.
In addition to Gary embarking on an untraceable and impossible expose of the affair (which is discussed in series joked as every man's dream scenario), Gary pretends to be a musician with connections to the American Embassy, warning them of approaching air raids and wooing Phoebe with bananas and chocolate. He later claims to be a secret agent.
In the series, Lyndhurst married in both the 1940s and 1990s. Fremantle Media/Shutterstock
He eventually moves to the West End, marries Phoebe and has a son who is actually older than him, all while maintaining his rocky 1990s marriage. In a strange coincidence, this mirrored Lyndhurst's own biography: his father left his mother for another woman when he was eight and started a new family. This desertion led them to “poverty,” he later recalled.
Good night, dear, but for the sake of laughter I played out Sparrow’s betrayal. In one gag — a bit of wish fulfillment — Gary impresses wartime Londoners by playing pop hits, most notably The Beatles, on the piano and passes them off as his own compositions.
As for Marks and Granny, Nicholas Lyndhurst was the only choice for Gary Sparrow. “Once we had the idea, we knew there was only one person who could play it,” Gran says. «Who could play an adulterer and retain the audience's sympathy?»
Marx and Granny didn't know Lyndhurst, but happened to be sitting at the table with Lyndhurst's agent the night they won a Bafta for writing Love Hurts. “We said we had something to talk to Nick about,” Marks recalls. “We sat with our BAFTA award on the table — she wasn’t going to say no! If Nick had said he didn't really like it, I think we would have scrapped the idea.»
'Perfect choice': Lyndhurst made the adulterer look sympathetic. Photo: Fremantle Media/Shutterstock
The first episode of «Goodnight, Lovely» aired on November 18, 1993. Its popularity peaked with the second and third series, airing in 1995 and 1996 respectively, when it regularly attracted over 12 million viewers. It ultimately lasted for an impressive six series, ending in 1999 with Gary trapped in 1945 — on VE Day, no less. They always intended to end the series with the end of the war.
Interestingly, the show followed real events. Marks and Granny borrowed a book from the Blitz Museum and, like Gary Sparrow, kept track of the dates of the actual air raids. In the 1995 Christmas special, Gary tries to warn Americans about Pearl Harbor and — in various episodes — meets real-life figures including Winston Churchill, Guy Burgess, George Formby, Noël Coward, Trevor Howard and Robert Maxwell. /p>
There are strange meta elements to Goodnight Love that sometimes cross the boundaries of reality and time. In the opening credits, Gary walks past a movie theater and sees himself on a 1940s-style movie poster—an oddly metafictional touch for what was essentially a studio prime-time sitcom. Elsewhere, Gary meets Captain Mainwaring and Sergeant Wilson from Dad's Army, introduced as real people. Goodnight Darling also plays with time travel in a fun way. In the first episode, the closest he comes to being caught is when Yvonne sees him (or what she thinks is his exact imprint) in an old newsreel from the 1940s.
Goodnight Love isn't just a weird concept, it's an unusually structured sitcom. Instead of a standard studio sitcom, in which the status quo is traditionally restored at the end of each episode, Goodnight Love plays out like a studio drama. The characters and story develop as the episodes progress. If you look at it now, the current story has aged better than the jokes.
The show was such a big success that there was talk of a US version. “It was impossible because there was no war,” says Marks. Much more intriguing was the prospect of creating a German version. “We were asked to do this in Germany—Nazi Germany,” Marx says. “We went to Berlin and realized that the Germans have no sense of humor… But it was a very interesting project — Gary moved between today's Berlin and the really dangerous Berlin during the war.”
The series tells about the real events of the Blitz. Photo: Fremantle Media/Shutterstock
Like most works of science fiction, Goodnight, Love has a cult following. The fans, Marks explains, call themselves “nice.” My grandmother was once attacked by a mob while she was being interviewed for a Radio 2 show. “When I walked up to Broadcasting House there were about 30 people there with cameras and autograph books,” he says. “I thought, I wonder who’s on the show that’s attracting all these people? It turned out it was me! They were fans of «Goodnight, Love!»
Marx and Granny joke that «Goodnight, Love» inspired films such as «Life on Mars» and Richard Curtis's «A World Without the Beatles» «Yesterday». “It’s not that we’re angry,” the grandmother laughs.
Goodnight Darling did return for a one-off special in 2016 as part of the BBC's festive sitcom season. Gary is stuck in the past — it's 1962 — and returns to the present day. He is stunned by how things have changed. “Gary had never seen a selfie stick or a phone booth turn into a defibrillator,” Gran says.
“They asked Paul McCartney to appear,” says Paul Burton. “Because of scheduling, they couldn't make it work. But there was supposed to be a scene where McCartney said: “Come on, you're ripping off my songs!”
Marx and Granny were waiting for a new full-fledged series, but — according to the plot, they heard: the industry reacted negatively to the BBC's revival of the old ones sitcoms. Instead, Marks and Granny wrote a musical version, which will appear sometime next year.
The sitcom itself remains — fittingly — of its time. As Marks says, “This is probably the quintessential '90s sitcom.”
Paul Burton's book Goodnight, Love will be published in 2024.
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