This Life (1996 TV series)
This Life is a BBC television drama that was produced by World Productions and screened on BBC Two. Two series were broadcast in 1996 and 1997, with a later reunion special in 2007. It centres on a group of law graduates in their twenties, embarking upon their careers while sharing a house in south London. There are no courtroom scenes in either the first or second series, and only one brief scene in the TV sequel. The show became a popular word-of-mouth hit and was included on BFI's list of the 100 greatest British television programmes. Production The series was created by Amy Jenkins, who was also its principal writer. Other writers contributed scripts, including Joe Ahearne (who also directed some episodes—the only person to do both on the series), Ian Iqbal Rashid, Amelia Bullmore, and Matthew Graham. Tony Garnett was the executive producer and Jane Fallon worked as a producer on both series. When the first series was screened it was a modest critical success. Nevertheless, the original production agreement secured a second series. In the lead-up to the broadcast of the second series, the entire first series was repeated, helping to generate a critical buzz around the programme, including front-page newspaper coverage, to the point that millions of viewers were waiting to discover the ultimate resolutions to the various plot-lines. Broadcasts The original run of the first series in 1996 was neither a critical nor a ratings success. It was only its repeat run of the first series, beginning 2 January 1997, then every Wednesday evening from 3 January in a post-Newsnight slot, that the show really began to attract serious, but still relatively moderate, viewer attention. This rerun ran smoothly into the start of the new second series, from Monday, 17 March 1997, restored to its peak-time slot, by which time it was attracting praise as a cult hit. By the time the second series ended, the show was attracting strong audience figures for a BBC Two show of around four million, and became a national talking point, regularly making headlines in both tabloid and broadsheet newspapers. Both of the series were then repeated late-night from 12 June to 2 August 2000 (each episode was shown twice during the first run). The lack of repeats was mainly due to the high VHS sales during the late 1990s. Another screening of the first series only was shown on Sunday evenings between 30 March and 13 July 2003. As a run-in to the reunion, the BBC repeated every episode, two each night Monday to Thursday, starting 6 November 2006, on BBC Two. As of March 2013, the entire series including This Life +10 and That Life (a short documentary about the reunion special) has been made available via Virgin On Demand. From 3 February 2020, series one of This Life was repeated on BBC4, carrying a dedication to its executive producer, Tony Garnett, who had died aged 83 during the previous month. Locations The south London terraced house that