drednm Finally saw this comedy series, which ran for 3 seasons in the 1990s. It stars Penelope Keith and William Gaunt as a self-absorbed couple about to retire and move to France, where the food and wine are so much better. On the very verge of their idyll, they receive news that their estranged son and his wife (called Bootface) have been killed in an auto accident and that they are the only kin of the three children. What to do? In short order, their plans for a Continental life are scrapped and the three kids (and various pets) arrive on their suburban doorstep. Two are young teens, and the third is even younger. Keith and Gaunt are faced with at least a decade of child care, schools, and all that comes with raising children.Yet what ensues is hilarious. The sea change necessary to cope with kids means that Keith and Gaunt have to do a 180 in their lives ... and quickly! The kids are challenging. The oldest, a girl, is a sulky thing with a strict, self-imposed vegetarian diet. The elder boy only eats Spam. The youngest won't eat anything that's round. Gone are the vintage wine collection, the antique car, and all their child-free friends.The series never gets that fuzzy, warm feeling. As the brittle Maggie, Penelope Keith is wondrous, bemoaning her fate while she deals with the daily regimen of meals and dishes and noise. Gaunt is also excellent as the slightly (only slightly) more tender grandparent who tries to accommodate the demanding kids. The grandparents are resentful. The grandchildren are resentful. Yet they muddle on.A highlight is a birthday party for the ever-harping girl. Nothing is ever right, and she belittles every around her (she's very realistic) to the point where Keith can't stand another moment and smacks her in the face with a cream pie (a dessert trifle). I imagine audiences across the land cheered. Later, in the girl's bedroom, Maggie asks, "So, did you like your trifle?" For anyone who has enjoyed Penelope Keith in GOOD NEIGHBORS or TO THE MANOR BORN, this is a must-see series. What a pity the BBC canceled the show after its third season. There was so much more humor to mine.

geordiesdad The high score for this thin and canned-laughter filled comedy baffles me. The first season is 'moderately' funny in a slow-moving...gentle comedy sort of fashion but from then on it progressively slides down the slope. Penelope Keith, capable of very talented acting shows her age and lack of enthusiasm and her co-star, although somewhat better, is still just delivering most of the lines. Probably my fault for expecting the quality of her abilities exhibited in The Good Life or To the Manor Born. Like many other comedies produced in the 90's by BBC it is what one might term a 'Bic comedy'...that is to say it is completely disposable. Watch it once and never think of it again. By the time season 3 has started the show is now nothing about the 'next of kin' and the children, but simply a vehicle to rant on about the loss of their previous privileged lifestyle. From improbable to ridiculous the canned laughter can't keep this dog alive and mercifully it is put to sleep after an exhausting 3 seasons. For lovers of Penelope it's worth a watch IF ONLY to demonstrate how even good actors can't save a poorly and thinly written storyline. It's no surprise as well that aside from the 2 leads, the other actors did NOT go on to any great success.

gee-15 Maggie and Andrew Prentice are entering their golden years and planning on a life of retirement leisure in the south of France when their estranged son, Graham and his wife perish in an auto accident leaving behind their three children(a girl and two boys) whom Maggie and Andrew barely know and now must care for. The series deals with how the five of them adjust to each other under exceptionally trying circumstances (They don't initially like each other very much). Believe it or not, this is a comedy! And a funny one it is despite the morbid subject matter.Penelope Keith creates a memorable character in Maggie Prentice, an abrasive, easily irritated and self-involved woman who has the chance to make up for the years of neglect of her own son by caring for his three children. William Gaunt is also very good as the more easygoing of the two grandparents (with a tendency to drink too much) who must also make some extreme sacrifices to do the right thing by his grandchildren.Wisely, this series has kept the more treacly moments to a minimum and so when they come they are all the more powerful as they indicate, fairly realistically, that grandparents and grandchildren are beginning to care for each other despite the conflicts that rage in the household daily. Some of the best moments: Andrew discovers that his grandson, Phillip, believes he is responsible for his parents' death and helps him cope; Georgia, the teen-aged daughter who is difficult at best, has stopped eating believing that no one likes her and it is up to Maggie to reassure her; and the last moments of the last episode of the series (shame on BBC for canceling it!) when Maggie receives a Mother's Day card from Phillip.Bottom line: highly recommended

F Gwynplaine MacIntyre After a brilliant career in exaggerated comedy roles such as Margot Leadbetter and Audrey fforbes-Hamilton, Penelope Keith stretched her acting talents to play a realistic woman in a sitcom with a grimly realistic premise: 'Next of Kin', which ran on BBC1 from May 1995 to February 1997. She was partnered by the equally talented William Gaunt: like Ms Keith, he is a performer who is best known for comedy roles yet is equally adept at drama. 'Next of Kin' featured a premise which American TV programmers would probably have rejected as too morbid.Maggie and Andrew Prentice are nearing sixty. They have one son, Graham, whom they've not seen in years. Graham developed into a snob and married a woman with radical politics who despised Maggie and Andrew. Consequently, Maggie and Andrew have been completely estranged from their son for more than twenty years. Comfortably middle-class but not wealthy, they're now looking forward to a retirement scheme that involves travel and fine dining.Suddenly a constable arrives to inform the Prentices that their son and his wife have been killed in a road accident. Maggie and Andrew are now the legal guardians of their three grandchildren: young teen Georgia, Graham Jnr (on the brink of teendom) and little Jake (just starting school). These children are total strangers to Maggie and Andrew, who consider the merits of putting the children into an orphan asylum. Ultimately, they choose to take the children into their home ... realising that their retirement will be put off indefinitely.The grandchildren have been raised in the mould of their annoying parents. Georgia is a politically-correct little snot, who fancies herself morally superior to everyone who fails to share her inconvenient political views. Georgia favours the socialist National Health Service over privatised physicians ... but then, when she decides to get braces on her teeth, she comes up with a pretentious reason for going to a private orthodontist instead of the NHS clinic ... meaning that Maggie and Andrew will get lumbered with the cost of the braces. Georgia's brother Graham, meanwhile, is on the brink of juvenile delinquency. Youngster Jake is the most annoying character in this series: he tends to be a little too twee, a little too babyish.'Next of Kin' features extremely realistic situations. When Andrew learns that Graham is bunking off school, he gives him the usual lecture: you've got to apply yourself and get good marks so you can get into a good college and then get a good job. To which Graham replies, very reasonably: 'My dad did all that, and he got killed anyway.'As happens often in long-running British TV programmes (but very seldom in American ones), the characters in 'Next of Kin' changed and developed over the course of the show's run. The three grandchildren were initially hostile to Maggie and Andrew, but gradually the five of them developed into a real family. Georgia began as a self-righteous little bitch: early on in the relationship, she writes false entries in her diary and then hides it in her room, knowing that the snooping Maggie will find it and read it. (Plausibly, the grandparents have their own faults here.) And yet Georgia gradually modified her extremist personality. In one episode, the Prentices take their grandchildren to the zoo. Georgia spots a tiger, and immediately she belabours the zoo keeper with a lecture about how the tiger should roam free in the wild. The zoo keeper sets her straight, explaining that this particular tiger is old and ill and can't survive in the wild, and anyway his original habitat has now been changed irrevocably by human development. Georgia is too bloody-minded to admit that she was wrong, but you can see that she's rethinking her views...A subplot in 'Next of Kin' depicted the relationship between sexy Liz (Tracie Bennett), Maggie's daily cleaner, and muscular young builder Tom (Mark Powley), who has been engaged by Andrew to build an extension on the house following the arrival of the three grandchildren. The Liz-Tom subplot was less interesting than the growing relationship between the Prentices and their grandchildren, and these two characters were dropped after the extension was finished.Remarkably, in spite of its morbid premise, 'Next of Kin' managed to be extremely funny whilst depicting extremely realistic situations. Most enjoyably, there was a total absence of those supposedly heart-warming 'Awwww' moments which render so many Yank TV comedies utterly unwatchable. No talking animals or hand-puppet aliens in this wonderful sitcom ... but some splendid acting and plenty of laughs. I'll rate 'Next of Kin' 9 points out of 10.