[Note from fansofonceandagain: "Once and Again" has recently debuted in England and the following review offers an interesting coutner-take on the show. Yes, the critic does mistakenly identify Elliot, of "thirtysomething," as Ethan, his son.]

The Next Generation

BYLINE: Mark Lawson -- When the American drama series thirtysomething was at its peak in the 1980s, a critic observed that the chronological title made the series naturally sequel-friendly. Where thirtysomething followed Hope, Michael, Ethan and the other yuppies through marriage, children and professional ambition, it was easy to imagine a fortysomething in which they got divorced, followed by decadal revisits (like John Updike's sequence of Rabbit novels) until seventysomething tracked them through retirement to the clinic and the grave.

In fact, the 90s passed without a fortysomething but now thirtysomething creators Edward Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz have delivered what is, thematically if not in terms of characters, an update. Sky One's Once and Again frequently looks and sounds like thirtysomething, with the difference that it's a post-marriage drama where the first series was a marriage one.

Rick (Billy Campbell) is an architect and Lily (Sela Ward) a writer. Recent separation or divorce have not prevented them from maintaining cash-hungry homes, clothes and cars. When they meet at a school soccer match, love breaks above their heads like lightning. The opening episode relies heavily on the generational reverses which powered the comedy in Absolutely Fabulous. As Rick and Lily nervously prepare for a date, their teenage children warn them not to have sex before they really know each other. The parents' fumbling attempt to make love is subsequently interrupted when the children come home unexpectedly.

For many watching, this is intended to be the comedy of recognition. Zwick and Herskovitz specialise in what might be called demographic television or mirror fiction. For most of the audience for one of their dramas, what you see is what you've got. They deliver a particular segment of consumers to a network by featuring glossy representatives of the target group - the professional middle-aged middle-classes - in a drama. It was fitting that Michael and Ethan in thirtysomething actually worked in advertising.

Indeed, Zwick and Herskovitz's shows are best understood as compellingly extended advertisements. The people have just too much sheen; the houses always look as if the cleaner has just left after a marathon session. And as for the message they're selling, it's the very American one of redemption and endurance. Their most giveaway piece of typing was when they called the female lead in their biggest series Hope. In thirtysomething, plot-line crises - like adultery, cancer, redundancy, child illness - were all opportunities for the couples to reconnect with each other.

In Once and Again, Rick and Lily have failed these reconnection tests, but the redemptive message is that sheer blinding romantic love is still possible for divorcees with children.

The starting set-up of Once and Again is revealing of the creative team's Madison Avenue instincts. Just as characters in American ads get out of bed in the morning looking beautiful and manicured, so the couple in this drama are, essentially, lovestruck teenagers who just happen to have a wedding wreck behind them; or a tragic widow and widower whose spouses are still distantly alive in the background. This is vital to Once and Again's tone. Because if the central characters were a second-time couple who had left their partners to be together,there would be too great a risk of the audience judging them.

The weakness of these creators - at least to English ears - has always been a certain Reagan-speechwriter cheesiness in their dialogue. Faced with a teenage daughter who considers herself ugly and unlovable and is frightened to go to a party, Lily counsels her: "You are not the miscreant, ugly person you pass yourself off as. . . Did you ever stop to think that fear might be your friend?"

But the new show fixes Zwick & Herskovitz's position in at least a backroom of US TV's hall of fame. One of the signature strengths of thirtysomething was a stylishness and visual ambition marked by things like the pretentious avoidance of capital letters in the title and the credits.

This narrative flashiness is now routine in US TV - a standard episode of Ally McBeal resembles an especially daring one of thirtysomething in this respect - but Once and Again is lavish with its fantasy sequences and documentary pastiche. As Rick and his ex-wife bicker at parents' night over their son, he is suddenly ambushed by a black and white flashback to the ecstatic night of the child's conception. Between scenes, the central couple footnote their emotions and actions in grainily-shot conversation with an unseen interviewer.

For those who've held on to the satellite dish or cable agreement after the divorce, and can watch Once and Again, the series will make an intriguing if uneasy coupling with BBC1's own autumn post-divorce show: an adaptation of Joanna Trollope's step-family novel Other People's Children. A useful point of distinction between British and American drama is that our shows tend to be admonitory where theirs are aspirational.

British hits make you glad you don't lead the characters' lives. American successes are designed to make you wish that you did. Once and Again proves the point once again.__The (London) Guardian (August 21, 2000)