How Not To Live Your Life
How Not To Live Your Life is a BBC3 sitcom written, directed, and starring Dan Clark. First aired in September 2007, it recently completed its second season.
The show is based around Donald Danbury (Dan Clark), a 29 year old neurotic and slightly cocky man living mostly inside his own imagination; and the viewer is often invited into his imagination, witnessing the parallel and perverse possibilities of the situations Donald finds himself in.
He lives in a house that he inherited for his grandmother and lets out a spare room to his secondary school sweetheart, Abby (Sinead Moynihan). Abby has a boyfriend Don can’t stand for obvious reasons and the first series ended with her breaking up with him and going on a 6 month world trip to get over it.
The second series picks up from that, with Don visibly heartbroken about Abby going away; especially when her breaking up with the boyfriend had led him into believing he was in with a chance. Don’s suck up side-kick Eddie Singh (David Armand) gets him a new tenant for Abby’s room, university student Samantha (Laura Haddock).
Don’s sometimes over confident and largely sarcastic attitude fails to impress Samantha, although living together with the inevitable involvement in each other’s lives brings them closer than what appeared possible at first.
As a sitcom, How Not To Live Your Life manages to somewhat retain its quality from the first series, maintaining its dark comic nature and constant flow of sarcasm. However, the central focus on Don Danbury buries the potential of the supporting cast of Laura Haddock and David Armand.
Haddock is well known from her portrayal of Natasha in Monday Monday, while David Armand has wowed audiences worldwide as the silent mime act Johan Lippowitz, performing for big names such as Oasis and Natalie Imbruglia.
The show fails to explore the potential hidden in these two artists’ characters as they are portrayed as baggage in a show centred on Don. Haddock fails to convince as a student but lives up well to the fantasies most men have about how stunning and classy students really ought to be.
But the biggest waste in the show is the way Armand is used to portray the suck up sidekick, the mostly annoying and clingy friend, Eddie Singh, who caters to Don’s every need without complaint and considers it the most fulfilling thing in his life.
The show could hardly boast of much intelligent comedy or situations which tickle a rib in the viewer. Despite such a major drawback, it manages to be an entertaining watch, drawing the audiences in by the interesting plot.
Yet How Not To Live Your Life fails to generate any laughs whatsoever, but doesn’t leave a bitter taste in the mouth.
