3. How Not To Live Your Life (BBC3, 2007 2011)
Weve
briefly discussed How Not To Live Your Life before but being a niche sitcom on BBC3 means that it has been largely overlooked and, despite having respectable run of three series and a Christmas special, never really hit the mainstream. Which is a shame because it for the majority of its run, it was a very solid programme. How Not To Live Your Life follows the life of twenty-something orphan Don Danbury (a misguided and selfish man whose personal philosophy is Always think with your balls) after he inherits his aunts house on the condition that he sorts his life out and stops being such a dickhead. He then gathers a group of misfit friends including Eddie Singh, his aunts carer who inexplicably sticks around and looks after Don while getting nothing in return, his teenage sweetheart Abby, and next door neighbour Mrs Treacher, who is a rival to Father Jack Hackett for the title of most objectionable OAP ever. It took a while to get going but the cast reshuffle in Series 2 that replaced Abby with a new character named Samantha played by Laura Haddock (The Inbetweeners Movie) and upgraded Mrs Treacher to the main cast really helped it take off with a more believable will they wont they story between Don and Samantha than there had been between Don and Abby, and a tighter character dynamic that helped the programme to find its way as an unconventional house-share comedy. As with most sitcoms in the past few years, it had a bit of a gimmick to make it stand out from its competition with frequent segues into hypothetical list cutaways like 5 Ways To Turn Up To A Date and 5 People Don Has Spent Christmas With. But the upside is that unlike cutaways in some other programmes, they were always relevant and worked as a nice breathing space between extended dialogue scenes. Its a good spin on the situation of a houseful of misfits and Don undergoes genuine character development as the series progresses rather than regressing like characters in some other sitcoms. Its definitely worth a watch but the best episodes come from Series 2 onwards with better characterisation and more interesting stories.