Sunday Times, 17 February 2002, by Sally Kinnes.
"The one to watch."
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*Manchild*
Tuesday, BBC2, 10pm

Last year, the controller of BBC2, Jane Root, promised to 
extend the reach of the station. She said there would be no 
more of the "piss off if you're over 30" attitude found in 
some programmes. Instead, there would be comedies to reflect 
the channel's age group. Middle-aged men, she revealed, are 
"the biggest buyers of Harley-Davidson motorbikes." Now the 
statistic has become a programme. *Manchild* is BBC2's 
tongue-in-cheek answer to *Sex and the City*. Though the 
characters are older, more wrinkled and male, it has been 
scheduled so as not to clash with the American import. It is 
about four fiftysomething friends who are professionally 
successful but emotionally all over the place. They like to 
think of themselves as fashionably attractive and enjoying a 
new lease of life, but they haven't been cool since about 
1968.

The cast is good: Anthony Head, whose career might have been 
desiccated by the Gold Blend ads had it not been revived by 
his role in *Buffy the Vampire Slayer*; Ray Burdis, who 
wrote, directed and appeared in *The Krays*; Don Warrington, 
still most famous as Philip Smith in *Rising Damp*; and 
Nigel Havers, given maximum opportunity to show off a well-
worked-out torso, when it isn't covered up in leathers.

"It's fun, isn't it," says Havers, with just a touch of 
uncertainty. "It's not *Pop Idol* - isn't that a good thing? 
It's not a gardening programme - also a good thing - and it 
doesn't involve football. How about that?"

In *Manchild*, Havers seems keen to send himself up before 
everybody else does. "They've been sending me up for years," 
he sighs. He (and probably rightly) anticipates some stick 
from the critics, but has given up worrying. "I don't know 
what to expect any more."

Havers, the archetypal toff, is like an actor in search of a 
definitive role. Fifteen years after he played *The 
Charmer*, the suave but murderous con man, he is still 
trying to resurrect it. He is currently appearing in *Art* 
in London's West End, but admits he worries about where the 
next job is coming from, and though last year he nearly got 
a break in *ER*, he turned it down to be with his wife, who 
was undergoing intensive chemotherapy for cancer and is now 
recovering.

A big fan of David Niven, Havers owns the rights to the 
actor's autobiographies, *The Moon's a Balloon" and *Bring 
on the Empty Horses*, but the screen adaptation is going 
slowly. Working with John Mortimer, he is currently 
struggling to turn what is essentially a series of anecdotes 
into a story.

Perhaps he has time - now he has reached 50 - for a midlife 
crisis, but the idea of a *Manchild* moment on its own 
doesn't seem to have occurred to him. No middle-aged angst? 
"I"m in denial about all of that."

Maybe it's still to come? "Maybe it is. I think the thing to 
do is to make sure you enjoy it," he concludes.

Which, of course, is not the point of all. Midlife crises, 
even when they are funny, need a dark edge. Reginald Perrin 
knew that. So did Basil Fawlty. *Manchild*, relentlessly 
played for laughs, just refuses to grow up and suffer.



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