Waiting For God – Season Three

Waiting For God Season Three
Stephanie Cole, Graham Crowden, Sandra Payne
2 DVDs 11 Episodes
BBC 1992
Warner Home Video 2008

Waiting For God is one of those wickedly smart and funny BBC sitcoms that are crossover hits on PBS. Superb acting and great writing that does not assume the audience has a grade 6 education make this comedy a must see.

Waiting For God is based on the lives of Diana Trent (Stephanie Cole) and Tom Ballard (Graham Crowden) at the Bayview Retirement Village. Tom is a great teller of mostly cinematic tall-tales that he himself believes. Diana is a former photojournalist who still has quite a lot of acid on her embittered tongue. This British old folks home is run by the slimy Harvey Baines and his ever in love with him plain Jane Jane.

In Season Three of Waiting For God Diana and Tom become crimebusters, the reverend runs off to a new age commune with Marion, Tom’s daughter in law, and Jane finally gets engaged to Harvey albeit for a short time.

Things get really funny when Diana and Tom consume their relationship and, it seems, a blender and a pine armoire. This brings a new dimension to the series but puts geriatric stud Basil’s — out of joint a bit.

A couple of the episodes here do get a bit preachy. The first time it is quite well done. The second time around it is almost as shrill as Julia on Designing Women. It is in the Christmas episode.

Episode 8 where Diana runs for office is a bit of a mess. This is the only weak one in the bunch. Episode 9 takes a surprising turn for the dramatic but season 3 of Waiting For God ends on a good note.

The special feature on Waiting For God Season Three is an overall excellent Christmas episode. You have to love Diana’s idea of Xmas: “…set fire to that nativity thing and snap the legs of those little lambkins”.

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