Brit Fix: Downton’s Evil Thomas Climbs Everest, Ditches Girlfriend

Thomas would be totally into Joe.

Ugh, I probably shouldn’t even been commenting on this show, given that I only watched the pilot, but oh my Lord since it’s happening even as we speak I am practically itching to share it and all it’s eye-rolling-ness with you.

I stumbled into watching Love Life because I heard Evil Thomas from Downton was a romantic protagonist and I was all “LOL! BUT IS HE STILL A BUTLER?” Because I could not imagine a world where I would be able to view scheming, scheming Thomas as anything other than a self-hating if handsome jerk. Give credit where credit’s due, the show had me believing that this dude’s name was Joe Drinkwater (SERIOUSLY. ENGLISH PEOPLE – IS THIS A LEGITIMATE NAME? BECAUSE IN AMERICAN IT IS NOT. UNLESS I GUESS YOU ARE NATIVE AMERICAN? NATIVE AMERICANS? VERIFICATION?) a man with a serious case of wanderlust.

The show starts with Joe returning to stay at his brother’s house for a bit after he, you know, climbed mount Everest. Which is bullshit. Because you train to do that shit. It’s not just something you do on a “whim”. He is served an extra dose of reality when he discovers that the girlfriend he left before leaving, is pregnant! And it’s not his!

this girl is pregnant with her boss’s – a tile shop owner – baby. Too bad the dude is having marital problems because his wife is mad because she can’t have a baby! About half way through the admittedly awful pilot I was all “Ten bucks that barren wife demands ownership of that other girl’s baby.”

I was not wrong.

That said, while writer Bill Gallagher (known for a program called Lark Rise to Candleford which is arguably the most British thing I have ever heard) has delivered a predictable story,  the dialogue and the acting pretty exquisite. In particular Barren Wife Who Has Gone Insane, as played by Sophie Thompson – you just die for her when she makes her big speech of apology to her husband at the end of the pilot, knowing full well he is about to confess to knocking up some other broad.

Anyway it seems like a pretty boring soap opera and I hate the lighting they use to indicate a flash back. So we’ll see if it gets better. I don’t know, man.