The first series of the British comedy-drama television series Cold Feet was first broadcast on the ITV network from 15 November to 20 December 1998. The six episodes were written by series creator Mike Bullen, produced by Christine Langan, and directed by Declan Lowney, Mark Mylod and Nigel Cole. It follows the award-winning pilot episode, broadcast in 1997. The storylines focus on three couples: Adam Williams and Rachel Bradley, Pete and Jenny Gifford, and David and Karen Marsden. They are played by James Nesbitt, Helen Baxendale, John Thomson, Fay Ripley, Robert Bathurst and Hermione Norris respectively.
The storylines follow the three couples as they try to stay faithful to each other. They are held back by issues such as impotence, infidelity, and unplanned pregnancy. Their lives are further complicated by their jobs, money troubles, and moving in together. Bullen embellished the scripts with events from his own personal life. The directors and producers made additional contributions, with the intent to keep the fiction in the programme as true to life as possible. The series was filmed in Greater Manchester in the first half of 1998, using Granada Television's studios, and exterior locations.
Critical reaction to the first episodes was negative, with many reviewers not liking the characters and finding the comedy drama format unusual. As the series progressed, critics' opinions became more positive; the production values rated highly and the fantasy scenes, which became a hallmark of Cold Feet, were well received. An average of eight million viewers watched the series each week. The following year it won awards from the Royal Television Society, the Broadcasting Press Guild and the British Comedy Awards. It was also nominated for the Rose d'Or and a Banff Rockie Award. All six episodes have been released on VHS, DVD and internet media formats.
Episodes
Production Cold Feet'''s pilot episode was intended by Andy Harries, the executive producer and Granada Television's controller of comedy, to lead to a series commission from the ITV network. Poor ratings on its night of broadcast in March 1997 stalled a commission; Harries told writer and creator Mike Bullen and producer Christine Langan to "forget it".Smith, p. 8. ITV's limited portfolio of comedyTibballs, p. 10–11. meant that although it was a ratings failure, the pilot was selected by default to represent the network at the Montreux Television Festival that year.Strenske, Bettina (June 1997). "Golden Rose of Montreux for Mike Bullen". London Screenwriters' Workshop. Retrieved on 17 July 2008. Archived from the original on 13 February 1998. The pilot won the Silver Rose for Humour and the Rose d'Or. ITV still did not commission a series, and in the meantime Granada received offers from the BBC and Channel 4 for a six-part series. In August 1997, David Liddiment, who had chaired the panel of judges at Montreux, became ITV's director of programming and pledged to rebrand the network's comedy output. This included six new episodes of Cold Feet, which were announced that August.Smith, Christine (15 August 1997). "Cold Feet heads up triple commission for Granada". Broadcast (Emap Business): p. 2. Production began in January 1998.Tibballs p. 28. Each episode was budgeted at £500,000, a small amount for a 50-minute drama.Staff (October 1998). "ITV's case of cold feet". Televisual (Televisual Media UK).
Cast All six main cast members from the pilot returned for the series; James Nesbitt and Helen Baxendale play Adam Williams and Rachel Bradley, a couple in a fledgling relationship; John Thomson and Fay Ripley play Pete and Jenny Gifford, a married couple whose first child is born in the first episode; Robert Bathurst and Hermione Norris play David and Karen Marsden, an upper-middle-class couple who are considering having a second child. Each had mixed feelings about whether there would be a series commission after the poor reception of the pilot; Ripley did not stop thinking about it, in contrast to Bathurst, who viewed it as just another failed pilot he had done.Smith, p. 75.Smith, p. 115.
Following the resolution of Karen and David's storyline in the pilot, in which David concedes that the couple need to hire a nanny,Smith, p. 18 Jacey Salles was cast as Ramona Ramirez. Salles was a bit-part actress in BBC sitcoms and had previously appeared in the 1998 Granada film The Misadventures of Margaret, which was co-produced by Harries. In her Cold Feet audition she was required to have a loud argument with her boyfriend over the telephone. She embellished this with "a bit of comic bastardisation of the English language" and won the part. Initially contracted for only two episodes, Salles assumed the Marsdens would employ a new nanny every few episodes, though she made two more appearances in the first series and eventually appeared in every series.Smith, p. 120 Lennie James made two guest appearances as Kris Bumstead, though his second appearance in Episode 6 was mostly in the form of flashbacks. James was keen to find out the resolution to the "who's the father?" cliffhanger, reportedly repeatedly asking the producers whether the baby was Kris's.Green, Dave (30 April 1999). "Unsolved mysteries of television". The Guardian (Guardian Newspapers): p. 15 (G2 supplement). Other actors to make appearances were Denis Lawson as Alexander Welch and Sam Kelly as Algernon Gifford. John Thomson was pleased to work with Kelly, as he was a big fan of 'Allo 'Allo!, a sitcom in which Kelly appeared.
Writing Storylines for a potential series had been drafted by writer Mike Bullen during production of the pilot.Ellard, Andrew (2001-06-25). "Mr Flibble Talks To Robert Bathurst: Talented Todhunter ". reddwarf.co.uk. Retrieved on 23 April 2008 ( by WebCite on 25 April 2011). When production on the series began, producer Christine Langan worked with him to create detailed plots for all six episodes, also acting as a script editor to redraft Bullen's work. Many of the plots were drawn from his own life; Pete and Jenny bringing up their new baby paralleled Bullen and his wife, whose first child was born in late 1997.Tibballs, p. 18. The scenes where Pete and Jenny attend the antenatal classes were written from Bullen's memory, when he and his wife were "given callipers, forceps and a suction cup to play with".Tibballs, p. 23. The conclusion of the fourth episode, in which Pete's father dies on the way to his grandson's christening, was suggested by Harries, whose own experience of the death of his father taught him that people rarely have the opportunity to say goodbye to loved ones in real life.Tibballs, p. 77. Not all storylines were based on real life: For Karen and David's marriage guidance scenes in Episode 5, Bullen consulted the relationship support charity Relate. Actors and directors also had input into the scripts; Bullen's original script for the marriage therapy scenes ended with David shouting and apparently using a fire extinguisher as an offensive weapon. Bathurst was not convinced that was something that his character would do, as David is "too much of a coward to do anything overtly" and would not leave himself so "exposed":Tibballs, pp. 85–86.
"As David grapples with the fire extinguisher to remove the hose from the barrel, we hear running footsteps approaching. The door is suddenly flung open and two male colleagues of the counsellor's burst open into the room. In a second they take a look at the scene, and we see what they see—the counsellor looking lost, Karen looking shocked, and most significantly, David standing over the counsellor, brandishing a fire extinguisher in an apparently threatening manner. Presuming their colleague to be in danger, the two men hurl themselves at David, knocking him to the ground. He squeals as he goes down, and complains loudly as he's pinned to the floor." —Episode 5's marriage guidance scene as originally scripted. Robert Bathurst believed that the scene left his cowardly character "exposed", so Mike Bullen rewrote it.
When storylining the six episodes, Bullen and Langan planned to split up Adam and Rachel at the series' climax, as "If [they] had just left them all living happily in their homes in Didsbury, there would be a less compelling reason to revisit them [in the second series]".Tibballs, pp. 120–123. Harries opposed the idea, believing that the audience would want a happy ending for the characters.Tibballs, p. 124. However, he allowed the writer and producer to proceed with their idea. Langan and Episode 6 director Nigel Cole wanted Adam to leave after finding out about Rachel's pregnancy. She would have followed him and proven her love to him by singing to him over the PA system of the train—similar to the pilot's conclusion. Bullen thought that this idea was "atrocious", so spent the Easter weekend drafting an end to the series. The genesis of Rachel becoming pregnant, possibly by Kris, came during the filming of the second episode. Langan suggested to Bullen that they return to Rachel's marriage later in the series, using an adage she had learned from working on a soap opera that if the "seeds" of a storyline are sown early on it can pay off later. The Brief Encounter homage was conceived close to filming. Bullen had not seen the film so had to rent it on video before writing the scene.
Filming The directors had twelve days to film two episodes each, equating to approximately five minutes of screen-time per day.Tibballs, pp. 34–35. Langan asked Father Ted director Declan Lowney to helm the first two episodes after his successful direction of the pilot. Lowney declined in order to shoot a film in Ireland with Terence Stamp; production on it was scheduled to begin in October 1997 and would have overrun into Cold Feets production calendar. Funding for Lowney's film fell through and he took the two episodes of Cold Feet after Langan offered them to him a second time. The other two directors were Mark Mylod and Nigel Cole.
Sets were constructed at Granada's Blue Shed studios in Salford for interior filming, which ran over 14 weeks from March to May. Exterior filming and location shooting was done in and around the city from February.Tibballs, p. 13 The climax to the first episode—where Rachel drives her Mini across a golf course to pick up Pete—was filmed at Withington Golf Club in West Didsbury.Thomson, John. (30 July 2008). Drama Trails: "Cold Feet to A Touch of Frost" [Television broadcast]. London: Tiger Aspect Productions for ITV3. A long lens was used to film the Mini approaching Thomson and Bathurst, making it appear closer to them than it was and avoiding having to drive it on the green. Filming on Episode 1 came close to overrunning, so Lowney filmed most of Jenny's birth scene in one uninterrupted take, encouraging the actors to ad-lib. Ripley wore a prosthetic abdomen to simulate the appearance of pregnancy throughout the episode and had a pubic wig applied for the birth scene. The uncredited baby who played Baby Adam in that scene was a two-week-old child who had been born two weeks premature, giving it the appearance of a new-born baby. The conclusion of the first episode was originally scripted to feature Pete and Adam playing crazy golf indoors. Lowney did not like the scene, so made thirty minutes available at the very end of production and directed Nesbitt and Thomson to just "talk". The scene was used by Bullen and Langan as the basis for an attraction between Adam and Jenny, implied in the sixth episode and developed in the second series.Tibballs, p. 54.