Gary Sparrow is a television repairman who lives in Cricklewood with his wife Yvonne... then one day something strange happens. During a job in the East End he walks down Duckett's Passage and finds himself outside what appears to be a 1940s themed pub... then he realises he really is in a pub in wartime London!
It soon emerges that he can come and go between the two eras by walking through the passageway but nobody else can. In order to explain his wartime activities he has his friend Ron, a printer, to make him fake MI-5 papers and wartime currency. He soon becomes friends with Phoebe, the daughter of the pub's landlord, a relationship that soon becomes romantic... something he justifies by the fact that his wife hasn't been born yet! As the story progresses Gary must balance his relationships with Yvonne and Phoebe while keeping his time-travelling secret... only Ron knows what he is up to.
This series is a lot of fun; having a protagonist travelling back to wartime London could easily have been an excuse to get him deeply involved in shaping the course of the war but thankfully this is mostly avoided as it focuses more of Gary's romantic difficulties. The characters are enjoyable to watch; given his behaviour Gary could easily have been hard to like but Nicholas Lyndhurst does a great job which keeps him sympathetic even though he is cheating on two women. Both Yvonne and Phoebe are good; amazingly they stay good throughout the series despite both changing actresses after series three... Michelle Holmes to Emma Amos in the case of Yvonne and Dervla Kirwan to Elizabeth Carling as Phoebe. Victor McGuire impresses as Ron and Christopher Ettridge is fun as the dim-witted wartime policeman P.C. Reg Deadman. As the series progresses the lives of most of the characters radically change which keeps the story from being repetitive while also making it a little more far-fetched. This means that by the end of the war the series meets a natural end point and finishes while the series is still a lot of fun rather than getting too silly. Overall I'd definitely recommend this series.
It soon emerges that he can come and go between the two eras by walking through the passageway but nobody else can. In order to explain his wartime activities he has his friend Ron, a printer, to make him fake MI-5 papers and wartime currency. He soon becomes friends with Phoebe, the daughter of the pub's landlord, a relationship that soon becomes romantic... something he justifies by the fact that his wife hasn't been born yet! As the story progresses Gary must balance his relationships with Yvonne and Phoebe while keeping his time-travelling secret... only Ron knows what he is up to.
This series is a lot of fun; having a protagonist travelling back to wartime London could easily have been an excuse to get him deeply involved in shaping the course of the war but thankfully this is mostly avoided as it focuses more of Gary's romantic difficulties. The characters are enjoyable to watch; given his behaviour Gary could easily have been hard to like but Nicholas Lyndhurst does a great job which keeps him sympathetic even though he is cheating on two women. Both Yvonne and Phoebe are good; amazingly they stay good throughout the series despite both changing actresses after series three... Michelle Holmes to Emma Amos in the case of Yvonne and Dervla Kirwan to Elizabeth Carling as Phoebe. Victor McGuire impresses as Ron and Christopher Ettridge is fun as the dim-witted wartime policeman P.C. Reg Deadman. As the series progresses the lives of most of the characters radically change which keeps the story from being repetitive while also making it a little more far-fetched. This means that by the end of the war the series meets a natural end point and finishes while the series is still a lot of fun rather than getting too silly. Overall I'd definitely recommend this series.