Review for Sadie, It's Cold Outside: The Complete Series

This Jack Rosenthal penned comedy just tries far too hard to deliver knowing, middle-aged existential cynicism to raise much of a laugh. It's pretty turgid stuff, miss-firing line by line, scene by scene, despite a sterling effort from its cast (Rosemary Leach and Bernard Hepton as Sadie and Norman Potter). Maybe I expect too much from a comedy? By all means give me some thought-provoking, existential philosophising. But please don't forget to make me laugh too.


It's fascinating to watch the very luke warm pilot (a special feature on the disc) transform into a very luke-warm re-enactment as the first episode. Maybe something has got lost in the sands of time but surely the committee responsible for reviewing the pilot could see that this was going nowhere in a dust-cart? Far more intelligent than many comedies of the day (On the Buses, Doctor at Large, Please Sir!) it is nonetheless, an extraordinary exercise in joyless miserablism.


Sadie Potter has been married for 23 years and is thoroughly fed up. With her marriage, with the world at large, and with the grey dreary reality of her everyday life. Husband Norman doesn't hear a damn word she says because, once he's back from work he likes to escape by watching TV or reading a paper. Anything to distract him from the un-utterable drudgery of his joyless middle-class life.


We learn, across six episodes, that they once had dreams - but that these have long since disappeared; eroded year by year by the reality of being a wage slave and the ennui of middle-class life in seventies Britain.


The pilot / first episode really sets up the conceit for the series. Starting in a new-fangled supermarket (with Rosenthal's own young wife, Lesley Joseph featuring as a surly cashier) we see poor Sadie becoming so disenchanted that she claims she would like to run naked through Tesco's with just a green-shield stamp on her naval. That sort of line is entirely indicative of 'as funny as it gets' - so you have been warned!

1. Episode One
First Broadcast: Mon 21st April 1975
Sadie and Norman have been married for 23 years and she swears that he has no idea what she does in the house. Not that he's listening with the damn TV on…


2. Episode Two
First Broadcast: Mon 28th April 1975
Sadie decides that 23 years is long enough to live in a house where the bathroom is too small, the kitchen overlooked and the living is gloomy. Norman agrees, though he's not really listening any more than anyone else. How depressing!

3. Episode Three
First Broadcast: Mon 5th May 1975
Norman and Sadie both end up at the doctors - Norman with his back and Sadie because of her nerves (she's convinced that the fridge is talking about her behind her back to the washing machine). Though it's not long before Sadie hurts her back and Norman is suffering with nerves. And the doctor is as mad as the rest of them.

4. Episode Four
First Broadcast: Mon 12th May 1975
When they meet up with friends they haven't seen for 20 years, Sadie wants Norman to tell her what's on the agenda. But he's more interested in what's on the TV.

5. Episode Five
First Broadcast: Mon 19th May 1975
When the plumber came round and left the overflow pipe for the washing machine dangling in the sink, he promised Sadie he would come back on Wednesday. What he neglected to say was - two years later.

6. Episode Six
First Broadcast: Mon 26th May 1975
Norman checks his horoscope and it says he's in for a surprise. Not half! He gets the sack. But that may well turn out to be the best thing that has ever happened to Britain's most miserable couple.


This really isn't a barrel of laughs. However, it is well thought of amongst Rosenthals' hardcore fan-base (and there are many of them) and its bleak humour may appeal to others more than to me. I guess I should be grateful to Network for releasing such marginal series for re-assessment. For me, this was more miss than hit and, having never seen it on its original airing, it didn't benefit from the rose-tinted spectacles of nostalgia either.