Friday, April 2, 2010

Saxondale

Saxondale is a British sitcom co-written by Steve Coogan and Neil Maclennan. Steve Coogan also plays the protagonist of the show: Tommy Saxondale. Actor, comedian, writer and producer, you probably know Coogan as Alan Partridge, his most famous character. He did voice-over work and acted in several films and series as well. The sitcom Saxondale was directed by Matt Lipsey, also director of the second series of Little Britain, and produced by Baby Cow Productions, a production company founded in 1999 by Coogan himself and Henry Normal. The programme consists of two series of respectively seven and six episodes of half an hour each and was broadcast on BBC Two from June 2006 until September 2007. In 2006 Baby Cow Productions signed for a deal with the American network NBC for two years. Along with some other sitcoms, Saxondale was then remade for a US audience.

The series is set in Stevenage and centred around Tommy Saxondale, a middle-aged man who has just divorced his wife. He is an ex-roadie, mad about rock music and fond of his Ford Mustang Mach 1. Magz (Ruth Jones), his Welsh girlfriend, designs and sells t-shirts in dubious taste with inscriptions such as “Fuck off” or depicting famous people smoking drugs. Tommy works as a pest-controller, a job which consists of eliminating rats, insects and other unwanted creatures. He gives his opinion on everything and can't help sharing his vision of life with his nineteen-year-old assistant Raymond (Rasmus Hardiker). He also has some problems with his temperament. If he feels people don’t show him as much respect as he deserves, he becomes excessively angry. In order to learn to keep his cool, he has to attend anger management sessions. His East Midlands accent sometimes makes him difficult to understand for non-native speakers. Colourful characters share the protagonist's life, such as Keanu (also played by Steeve Coogan), an unemployed, homosexual drug addict. Vicky (Morwenna Banks) is the receptionist of the agency for which Tommy works. She knows exactly how to get on his nerves. Alistair (James Bachman) is the therapist leading the anger management sessions. He is very often confronted with Tommy’s lack of enthusiasm and aggressive behaviour. Tommy’s neighbour, Jonathan (Darren Boyd) pretends to be interested in cars and music only when he has a request. Besides these main characters, some others appear less frequently.


Saxondale is less famous than Partridge and both characters’ personalities are very different but still, the review of the programme is positive in general.

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