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Going Forward carries on where Getting On left off, with Jo Brand returning as nurse Kim Wilde, having left the NHs two years earlier and now works for a private healthcare firm, Buccaneer 2000, doing home visits to elderly patients, often in chronic pain and in need of care. And also in need of a better service, since Kim frequently finds missed appointments, but you get the impression the company is run in a rather dated fashion given that the year 2000 was long ago.
She goes above and beyond the call of duty in a world that doesn’t care, while being interrupted by family members on the phone, including husband Dave (Omid Djalili), who works for a chauffeur company, and son Max (Ben Colbert), who skips school to look after his daughter when his offscreen girlfriend, Roxanne’s, mum is ill and can’t look after baby Poppy, but as for why Roxanne, herself, can’t look after her, that’s never explained and laziness is presumed.
The mintuae of life is also covered such as Kim burning her outfit with the iron, costing £32 to replace, while Dave is jealous of another man who owns his own company and leases out a fleet of limos, the latter’s scenes with fellow driver Terry (Tom Davis), rarely hitting the mark in any way whatsoever, and Kim’s family life affects both of their employments in overly-ridiculous ways.
The visits are the most engaging thing about this comedy/drama but they’re very few and far between. Of course, had it been ONLY those, it might’ve been verging on Paul Whitehouse’s Nurse, but without the overacting.
I loved Getting On, as it delved deep into the issues affecting the NHS in general, and the dark comedy comic timing was second to none, but for this, it’s missing the writing skills of Vicki Pepperdine and Joanna Scanlan, leaving it just occasionally okay, and it’s such a shame that this falls flat by comparison.
I’ve seen all three episodes in this series and it doesn’t exactly come on in leaps and bounds from the first, although – and no spoilers – there’s a moment during the middle of the last episode that makes it worth sticking with. However, I think I preferred Kim’s family when we didn’t see them, and only heard what Kim told us while she was at work.
Going Forward Series 1 isn’t yet available to pre-order on Blu-ray or DVD, and the series continues next Thursday on BBC4 at 10.00pm. If you missed it, you can watch the first episode on BBC iPlayer, up until June 18th, and click on the above picture for the full-size version.
A boxset of Getting On Series 1-3 is already available on DVD.
Episode 1 Score: 4/10
Director: Michael Cumming
Producer: Geoff Atkinson
Writers: Jo Brand and Geoff Atkinson
Cast:
Kim Wilde: Jo Brand
Dave Wilde: Omid Djalili
Jackie: Helen Griffin
Terry: Tom Davis
Kelly Wilde: Imogen Byron
Max Wilde: Ben Colbert
Mrs Jenkins: Vivien Bridson
Mr Jeffrey: Louis Saint Juste
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.