Rosemary & Thyme time
Bet you didn’t think you’d see a Von Dutch T-shirt in THIS show
I currently have the flu, which means I am bored out of my mind, which means two things: 1) I’ve made a Substack, and 2) I’ve been using the past few bedbound days to do a full rewatch of Rosemary & Thyme, one of my all-time favourite comfort shows.
R&T (as I shall be calling it) is a cosy crime drama made between 2003 and 2007. There were three series (yes, SERIES, none of this American ‘seasons’ bullshit). It was on ITV. I’ve got the DVD boxset because of course I have. It stars Felicity Kendal as Rosemary Boxer and Pam Ferris as Laura Thyme; they’re a pair of gardeners who go into business together and coincidentally end up solving a murder on every job they do.
To be more specific, Rosemary is a ‘plant pathologist’ and Laura is (handily) an ex-policewoman. Rosemary is characterised as independent (never been married, no kids), and a bit more fiery, while Laura’s introduction involves her husband (who we never see) leaving her for a younger woman. Throughout the series, Laura’s feelings about her marriage and ex are brought up a few times, usually when one of her (quite boring) adult children pops up in an episode. But mostly, the focus is simple: gardening and murder.
For me, R&T is THEE cosy crime show. The locations are beautiful, the drama is gentle, almost everyone is middle-aged, the actors have great chemistry, the scripts don’t take themselves too seriously. It’s like Midsomer Murders with more gardening, or Death in Paradise but, er, in the UK.
Speaking of middle age… as I reluctantly hurtle towards it myself (gulp), something I’ve been noticing on this watch is that Rosemary actually has a pretty aspirational ‘middle-aged woman who dresses her age but doesn’t look like shit’ wardrobe. Polo shirts and fitted T-shirts paired with simple cardigans, short jackets, and either well-fitted cargo trousers or bootcut jeans. A formula that works. I feel like I could learn something from this.
Mind you, R&T is from the early to mid-y2k era, and occasionally there are random nods to the fashion of the era, like for example…
Series 1 is the best, obvs. The first episode is so efficient in how it introduces Rosemary and Laura, gets them together and adds a genuinely intriguing mystery. Most of the episodes are solid: the only ones I have problems with are #4 (which has a ‘romantic’ subplot about a schoolteacher fancying an exchange student… yeah, NO) and #5 (which is not bad or weird at all; I just found I couldn’t remember anything about it, which is quite strange when you’ve watched a show approximately 5,000 times).
In series 2 there was obviously a bigger budget because they go ABROAD, baby (France and Italy). Still, the UK episodes are the cream of the crop, with ‘The Invisible Worm’ (which is, get this, a Halloween episode), ‘The Gongoozlers’, ‘Swords Into Ploughshares’ and ‘Up the Garden Path’ all among the best they ever made.
In series 3, you can tell they start running out of ideas. There are some dumb concepts (in one episode they find an abandoned baby and just hang onto it rather than, you know, immediately going to the police, and in another one Laura gets into amateur dramatics and starts being a bitch to Rosemary, which is out of character). There are also two episodes set in Spain, which were presumably shot back-to-back to save money, but they’re so obviously in a dry climate that doesn’t seem the best venue for traditional gardening.
The final episode ends with a bit of a whimper, which always makes me feel quite sad. Despite my misgivings about S3, I wish we’d got a fourth. Apparently they were planning episodes in Portugal, which would have been cool, and they could have done a PROPER final ep. Personally I would have done a Sex & the City and set it in a nostalgic vision of autumn or winter rather than the (obviously necessary) ‘perpetual summer’ of the rest of the show.
Random discovery while looking stuff up for this post: the soundtrack CD is rare and goes for, frankly, insane amounts of money on eBay. Adding it to my list of things to scour charity shops for, along with Jane Norman tops, Per Una denim skirts and disc belts.
Being slightly more serious, this show got me through some genuinely awful times when I was younger. I still remember sinking into the comfort of R&T when my mental health was absolutely battered and for that I will always be grateful, and always love it.