Vicious - The Complete Second Season

The first series... pardon me, Season One... of the ITV Bitcom "Vicious" was so awful (despite a stellar cast including Sir Ian McKellen, Derek Jacobi, Iwan Rheon, Frances de la Tour, Philip Voss, and Marcia Warren) that a second season was all but unthinkable to have to sit through. The silver lining to that particular gloomy prospect was the idea that the show must have improved.

Well, good news. In Season Two, "Vicious" has indeed become better... only marginally, but enough. The show has gone from unwatchable, bilious drivel to good-natured pap with a bite.

There are a number of reasons for this: The season is better plotted overall; the exchanges between longtime same-sex partners Freddie (McKellen) and Stuart (Jacobi) are less cruel and leavened more thoroughly with an underlying humor and love; and, perhaps most essentially, the show gets out and about more often this time around, with four of the six episodes starting off as Freddie and Stuart stroll around on the streets of London. (Those of you who remember how terrible the sound quality was when "Ab Fab," definitely a spiritual ancestor this program, would leave the soundstage might have worries at this bit of intel, but rest assured the production is consistently well done even when the scripts are soft in the middle.)

In case you missed Season One (or blotted it out of memory), "Vicious" is the brainchild of American writer and producer Gary Janetti ("Will and Grace," "Family Guy"), who could never have gotten away with half of what he puts on the screen here had he tried to sell the series to one of the three big American networks. The show revolves around Freddie and Stuart, who have been a couple for half a century. They dwell like two not-so-maiden aunts in their large, musty flat, living on what's left of the money Freddie has earned during the course of a less than distinguished acting career. After so long together, they have brought out the worst in one another, and that's where they have settled.

Their friends accept them for who they are, crotchety warts and all; then again, their friends are also pretty obnoxious. Violet (de la Tour) is a superannuated nymphomaniac who is always ready to pull a flask of booze (or two) out of her handbag; Mason (Voss), Freddie's brother, is equally cantankerous, and evidently single; and dotty Penelope (Warren) provides the show, which makes a good deal of humor out of aging and infirmity, with un-PC laughs based on her senility.

The one sweet natured member of this ramshackle clan is Ash (Rheon), the good-looking, twenty-something guy who lives upstairs and who has adopted Freddie and Stuart as his gay uncles. Ash is a millennial, and thoroughly modern; he's straight, and never seemed to mind too much when, in the early episodes, the two geezers were always hitting on him. (He saved his horror, then as in Season Two, for the passes Violet makes at him every time they meet.)

It's Ash who brings some fresh blood into the show with the introduction of his new girlfriend, Jess (Georgia King). Her introduction to the rest of the group is typically zany; she and Ash happen into Freddie and Stuart's flat just as the guys, together with Violet, are all pretending to other people in order to fool Violet's sister Lilian (Celia Imrie), a woman whose accomplishments in life have left Violet feeling like a loser. Ash catches on and plays along, to the point of pulling off a backflip when he discovers that the role he's been assigned -- as Stuart's son, Stuart playing the part of Violet's AWOL husband Jasper (Michael Cochrane) -- supposedly has a history as a champion gymnast.

It's Ash to the rescue again when a cute, gay gym trainer named Theo (Jack Ashton) is bilking Freddie and Stuart with specially "discounted" training packages; and when a surprise wedding proposal rolls around, well, Ash is in the thick of that, too. (He goes on to be in the thick of a stunning hookup -- one of the show's braver moments, the repercussions of which are played with surprising restraint.)

Suffice it to say that from mid-season on, the show centers on impending nuptials, with the requisite complications (breakups, make-ups, cake disasters) that must befall a comedy stuffed with one-note tropes, obvious plotting, and cheap laughs. Things work out in the end... more or less... and though there's still no word on whether there might be a third season, the last scene of the sixth and final Season Two episode is poignant and fitting.

There are more big laughs in this season -- mostly due to the talents of the cast; McKellen's priceless line, "I went Method on that one" is a gem; you'll know why when you see it -- and overall, the humor, though coarse and low, is at least passably amusing. Maybe if there is a third season, the show will finally become something remarkable for its material, rather than for its concept. (Janetti and ITV deserve props for even putting a show on the air that centers on a long-time gay couple.)

A single DVD contains all six Season Two episodes (sorry, no Christmas Special this time), as well as a few short special features. "The Making of Series 2" delves into some of the season's more promising setups (such as Violet and Penelope occupying Freddie and Stuart's flat while the boys are at the gym with heartthrob Theo); McKellen and Jacobi get their own (extremely short) feature, in which they discuss the show and their input into Season Two; and Janetti, too has an interview segment.

"Vicious: The Complete Second Season"
DVD
$24.99
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