Cold Feet recap: episode five – middle-age in fifty shades of grey

It’s very grey isn’t it, Adam’s rented flat? The tiles, the cupboards, the walls, the bread bin – everything. Plus Adam (all four of him, it’s a trick to show the passing of time and that he’s bored) is wearing grey. Karen’s kitchen too, very grey. Is it intentional I wonder, to underline the ageing of the characters? And what about the lepidoptera? Karen’s got a framed butterfly display, Adam’s got a moth (or bees) motif thing going on. Is it something to do with the transience of life perhaps, or chaos theory … or is that reading too much into Cold Feet?

Anyway, who’s going to be the first unchallenging singer-songwriter to make an appearance on the soundtrack? Gilbert O’Sullivan! Straight in. Alone Again – yes, I see, Adam is, alone, again, what with Angela back in Singapore.

But here’s something for the young ’uns: Jess Glynne. Still an unchallenging singer-songwriter, but a more recent one. Young Chloe is doing to JG’s Take Me Home what her dad Pete failed to do to old Harry, ie murdering it. Pete’s not Chloe’s biological dad of course, someone called Grant is, and here he is, Robert Webb, out of the blue and out of AA, doing some kind of 12-step atonement tour.

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Pete’s having problems taking the money Harry left him. (Take it – Harry’s own offspring are awful, plus Jenny needs a holiday if only to get away from Grant, and Chloe definitely needs singing lessons). David’s fraud thing’s not going well. And Adam still hasn’t hooked up with his hot landlady from across the hall, the owner of the grey flat. Hang on, here she is, half in the cupboard under Adam’s sink, fixing a plumbing issue. Is this a porno from the 1970s? Problem fixed, no extras. They’re really spinning that one out. Come on, I’m getting bored with Karen and Eddie’s slowly-slowly romance …

But the action and the music gets better. So Karen tells her boss where to shove his job, to Missy Elliot. And Pete punches Grant in the face, to Motorhead. Ha, that’s more like it.

Issue of the week

Well, the issue of when absent biological parents suddenly turn up, obviously. But also the problems facing the publishing industry today, and its subsequent dumbed-down offerings. Cats That Kill!, Ugly Towns … actually, I know someone who’s done that one, for real.