Cold Feet episode 5 recap: Adam sleeps with Sarah

The former Romeo we all thought had settled down to relationship bliss in Didsbury with lovely new girlfriend Tina… well, he only went and slept with his work colleague Sarah (Amy Huberman) didn’t he?

Yes, he has form that Adam, as anyone who has seen the late 1990s Cold Feet will attest, and I suppose it was seen coming a mile off. Just as we thought Tina’s ex-lover – and Sarah’s’s ex-husband – Jamie was trying to come between them– up popped Sarah herself, Adam’s flirty work colleague and the real cuckoo in the nest.

I have a sneaking suspicion that Sarah may be the one who leaked the Jamie/Tina sex tape – but that may surface in another episode.

For now, though, there is the small matter of their shady liaison which happened after their work away day, as sure as night follows day. Sarah dropped enough hints, calling Adam in for a nightcap at their hotel and... here it is.

Even worse, mini Adam, son Matt, was also unfaithful, albeit with just a snog. It happened at the boozy house party he held when his dad was away, Karen catching him kissing a girl in the bathroom who very much wasn’t his girlfriend Olivia (who two weeks before had just been through the agony of terminating the life of their unborn child).

“She’s just so down at the moment,” said Matthew of the girlfriend whose hand he had just held in the abortion clinic just days previously; he won’t be winning any sensitivity awards for that little gem.

As Cold Feet writer Mike Bullen is a master of irony, Adam then had a stern chat with his son and implored him not to be “that person”, the one that “runs away “at the first sign of trouble... into the arms of somebody else.”

His stare of self-loathing told us exactly what was on his mind, though he didn’t actually confess his misdeed to Tina.

He did try to end things with Sarah, though, but his heart clearly wasn’t entirely in it and right at the close found himself unable to. She said they were just friends how work together and he said “we’re not though, are we” before looking wistfully into the distance once more.

There is unfinished business here, I think we can safely say.

There was also upheaval in Karen’s world too. The dry drunk publisher had just about enough of husband David, now on the board of her publishing company.

David and Karen's arch enemy Benjamin (whom David called “Ben") turned down a book she wanted to take on and that, as well as all the nagging from her children, saw her run off to a posh hotel and stared longingly at the drinks cabinet.

Fortunately, Pete, who had a breakdown of his last series, was aware of the signs and saved the day turning up like a hero and talking her through it. There haven’t been many Pete/Karen moments throughout the Cold Feet canon and it was nice to see.

Karen was saved, even doofus David saw the error of his ways and made amends, cooking a nice family breakfast and promising to back the book he had rejected.

But it looks like Adam and Tina’s troubles are only just beginning.