Cold Feet caps an excellent series with an action-packed final episode
Ben Dowell has just about caught his breath as Mike Bullen sets things up very nicely for next year in episode 8 of the reboot
The return of Cold Feet has been a triumph for ITV. Creator Mike Bullen has pulled off that rare feat of making a reboot that not only stands comparison with the original – it might (whisper it) have even been better than the first run.
Just consider tonight’s final episode, which packed in incident after incident – before a resolution which brought everyone together to whet your appetites for next year.
The focus was Adam’s 50th birthday. (Or was it his 49th? He insisted that he hadn’t yet reached his sixth decade, but it’s never easy to tell if Adam’s telling the truth, is it?)
It was a good excuse for some of the excellent Cold Feet tunes which have always been a key part of the show’s appeal. That and the return of another old favourite plucked from the memory bank – David and Karen’s Spanish nanny Ramona (Jacey Salles), who turned up at the party with Josh, Karen and David’s son, newly returned from his gap year and with some news of his own: he’s gay.
As well as coming to terms with that (and well done David for not being as stuffy about it as you might have expected), Karen’s ex-husband had his sights set on other things. Namely, proposing to his former spouse. After all, David had got off his fraud charge and he wanted to make his move….
But then, so did Art Malik’s Eddie, who showed up with a sparkler and a proposal of his own. Typical Cold Feet: high emotion, high melodrama, all grounded in an intriguing sense of plausible reality, even when the two men ended up on the floor, spitting and brawling at each other on a Twister mat.
Yes, I liked that Twister mat. Cold Feet has always had a good eye for the absurd, no less so with this series.
But if you think that was incident enough, there was the moment Pete and Adam went out to replenish the party booze, only to find themselves in the middle of an armed hold-up.
As they feared for their lives, the hostage crisis teased out confessions from the two men. Pete told Adam about his thoughts about suicide and Adam affirmed his urgent desire to live for his son. Matthew, he explained, had already lost his mum. “Don’t make him an orphan,” he pleaded to the gunman in a moment high on emotion.
But this being Cold Feet, just as we had adjusted to another shift in tone the bubble was burst and we learned that the assailant’s gun was a replica. Brilliant. Pete and Adam still had a hug though.
And it was an excellent prelude to the moment of truth - the crunch time when Tina had to make her choice between married boyfriend Jamie and Adam. And of course there was only one choice. The new Rachel was born...
It was a very good episode to end an excellent series which has really been imbued with a vital sense that these characters, who so gripped us when the show ended 13 years ago, have grown older, if not always wiser.
Series seven begins filming in March and will, according to creator Mike Bullen, begin in the early stages of Adam and Tina’s romance.
There are many other questions to answer. Will David wangle his way into the affections of Karen? Will Pete get over his depression? And what is Ramona going to make of everything?
It’s a testament to the excellence of this show that I – like so many of you – can’t wait to find out.
Cold Feet series 7 will air on ITV next year
