More TV Memories – My Wonderful Life.

My Wonderful Life (ITV, 1997-1999) 

My Wonderful Life was a comedy-drama series created by Simon Nye who was also behind such great shows as Men Behaving Badly and Is It Legal?, and he wrote eight of the 23 episodes. It was something of a low-key show that was based on an hour-long one-off drama called True Love that was shown in 1996 and was recorded on location without a laughter track. The theme music was “I Am I Feel” by Alisha’s Attic. 

The main character in the show is Donna (Emma “Watching” Wray) who is a young single mother trying to raise her two daughters Rhiannon and Shirley after going through a divorce. She works as a nurse and is struggling to further her career but enjoys working alongside her friend Bridget (Clare Perkins who was recently in EastEnders) and they both often have to deal with irritating patients. 

After a while Donna begins to fall for two of her colleagues, the reliable doctor Roger (Hamish “Vodafone” Clark) and the more adventurous paramedic Lawrie (Gary “Minder” Webster who left after the first series). Things get even more complicated though when her ex-husband Phil (Philip “Gene Hunt” Glenister) returns. Eventually she chooses Roger. 

Another thing that Donna has to deal with is her next-door neighbours often interfering. The rather dull Alan (Tony “Baldrick” Robinson) who sees himself as something of a “new man” and Marina (Elizabeth Berrington) whose marriage is clearly in trouble, and they often argue in front of Donna and their son Simon. 

As the episodes pass Alan begins to embark on what he calls a “parallel relationship” (that is to say an affair) with Lydia. Phil also starts to go out with the glamorous Gail, but even after he gets her pregnant he realises that he still has feelings for Donna. 

My Wonderful Life ran for three series but ITV seemed to lose interest by the end with the final series being scheduled rather erratically and it was a moderate success. It wasn’t the end just yet though as the show had a surprise repeat run on ITV2 in 2000 but it hasn’t been seen on the screen since. 

I must admit that my sister is a bigger fan of My Wonderful Life than I am but having had a look at some series one episodes for myself I did enjoy it with lots of good performances, realistic situations and interesting characters. 

When trying to find out more about the show I was surprised to discover that it doesn’t even have a Wikipedia entry but someone somewhere must have watched this. It also hasn’t been released on DVD but it definitely deserves to be, there have been a lot of comedies far inferior to My Wonderful Life that have come out so I would definitely support the release of this one, hopefully one day it will happen. 

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