Underplayed Gems

Sink or Swim (1980)

Sink or Swim poster
Genre
sitcom
Country
United Kingdom
Length
3 seasons, 19 episodes
Rating
7.0 of 10 from 4 voters
Elsewhere
IMDb
The 3D catalogue: film cases on wooden shelves, with the cat sitting at the counter next to its greeting.

The catalogue in 3D

The film shelves have a room of their own that you can walk around in. The cat behind the counter is the AI Catbot, and they pick real films from the same catalogue when you tell them what you feel like watching. Nothing is for sale, here or in there. Go in from here and this series is already out on the counter, with more like it waiting on the shelf next to it.

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How it feels

A young man in London lives above a gas station and tries to get ahead in life but keeps falling short. His girlfriend is serious about environmental causes. When his lazy younger brother moves in, his messy lifestyle makes things even more complicated.

lightheartedmildly humorousrelatableawkwardeverydayunderstatedslightly chaotic

What happens

Sink or Swim is a BBC TV sitcom created and written by Alex Shearer. It ran for three series between 4 December 1980 and 14 October 1982 and stars Peter Davison as Brian Webber and Robert Glenister as his brother Steve. Brian lives in a flat above a petrol station in London (in the last series he moved to Newcastle to attend university). He's trying hard to make his way in the world, thus far with limited success. His girlfriend, Sonia, is a very serious minded young woman who is passionate only about things like vegetarianism and ecology. When Brian's younger brother, Steve, arrives in London looking for somewhere to stay, his lazy, cynical, noisy "Northern lout" attitude disrupts Brian's already messy life. Like Only Fools and Horses, Sink or Swim was filmed in Bristol doubling for London. Shearer later wrote the Nicholas Lyndhurst sitcom The Two of Us for LWT. Production of the sitcom overlapped the first two years of Davison also starring as the Fifth Doctor in Doctor Who, which imposed constraints on the recording schedules. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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