SunnyDaise

The premise for Chapter Three is about 30 years out of date - with the quintuple whammy of expensive tuition fees, too many graduates, lack of long-term jobs, unaffordable housing and a high break-up rate, it's not very realistic that all three children went away to study and very likely at least one kid will be back, pos with grandkids in tow - next season will be Chapter 4 already. Too often, we're seeing 50ish writers depicting storylines they lived as students, not what's happening today. Chuck in a few redundancies, cancer in two generations, a daughter recovering from domestic abuse or a street attack and it'll be spot on.

I really enjoyed the music in this (1970s) adaptation - many newer ones have a soundtrack that's not of the era / too much that it distracts from the actors.

The writing is a pretty faithful version, and much longer than other productions. Mrs Jennings has a bigger part, which is quite surreal for those of us familiar with Patricia Routledge's iconic role as Hyacynth Bucket in 'Keeping Up Appearances' - which I now feel was at least 20 years in the making. And Mrs Palmer is a chip off the block too.

Clive Francis as Willoughby is also a precursor to his later performance as Miles in 'May To December'. With these comedy connections and the good use of original dialogue, there's much in common with Emma Thompson's (1990s) movie.

Unfortunately the leading female character is a total nightmare who doesn't even understand the problems of her own generation, never mind those of others. For her to say that a house deposit is enough to get a mortgage when a single buyer would still need to borrow nine times the average wage, is sadly an all too frequently heard yet inaccurate comment - what bank will lend that amount?! Like too many people, the DS is so busy showing off supposed knowledge of the local area, she is totally unaware of the situations her colleagues face - whilst this is often true-to-life, we certainly don't want to watch it for entertainment when we have to put up with it in reality.