Nice Town

 

My love of obscure TV miniseries that I remember as part of the haunted generation has led to me seek out Nice Town. It took me a long time to find it all. At first I discovered episode two and three on Dailymotion, but episode one was missing from that platform. This bothered me because it is the best one and it is essential for understanding the two others. Eventually, with the help of a HPANWO reader, I found the entire series on a Russian website. Nice Town was first broadcast in 1992 on the BBC. It was directed by Pedr James and written by Guy Hibbert. It is a story about family who move into a new purpose-built suburban estate of designer McMansions. The central characters are two thirty-something couples; Joe and Frankie, and Paul and Linda. Paul and Joe are brothers and Joe and Linda are ex-partners. This dynamic quickly develops into a terrible crisis. Paul is sterile and wants a baby with Linda. Joe and Linda then conspire for her to get pregnant via donated sperm from Joe; and keep this secret from Paul, making him think that he has recovered from his sterility and is the real father. Alongside all this there is a subplot involving a local teenage boy and girl with very conservative parents who want to have a sexual relationship, so Joe provides a love nest for them in his own home. What's more, ironically, Paul discovers that his and Joe's own parents have a deep dark secret related to hereditary matters. Predictably, all these secrets cannot be kept and when the truth comes out the family is torn apart.
Nice Town can be watched here. The episodes all have ironic names from the bible. "Immaculate Conception", "Unto Us a Child is Born" and "Idyll".
Episode 1: https://ok.ru/video/6858066758392.
Episode 2: https://ok.ru/video/6858066496248.
Episode 3: https://ok.ru/video/6858066889464.
 
There are other somewhat sardonic elements; for example, there are placement shots including the sky and they have a cartoon sun and moon with faces on them. The series is essentially a parody of British suburban middle-class society. We are a nation obsessed with social class and satires about it are very common, but this one is highly unusual. Joe is a very extreme caricature. I first came across Nice Town again when I was researching this year's St Theo's watch party which was for Paper Mask, starring Paul McGann, see: https://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2026/07/paper-mask-watch-party-livestream.html. McGann also plays Joe, and that character has many similarities to Matthew Harris. They share a common weakness, selfishness and deceit. I find Joe one of the most repulsive individuals I've ever encountered in fiction. He is a feeble, effeminate manipulator, a ruthless and egocentric blackguard. In terms of his marriage, he has an almost complete traditional role-reversal with Frankie. She goes out and works as a medical research scientist. Joe stays at home and looks after their daughter Katie as well as doing the housework. He wears a pink frilly apron while doing this. He has a totally blinkered and unrealistic vision of the world around him. When he presents his idea to Linda he calls it "a simple gift of life" as if he is a member of some New Age free love commune. When he is questioned by the police over his love nest for the teenagers he is totally indignant and entitled. He doesn't understand that what he did was criminal. He is physically puny and when Paul confronts him violently Paul can do so with impunity. Despite Joe's ineffectual and bland personality, his underhand actions leave a trail of chaos and destruction. I must admit, my antipathy towards Joe is really just personal because he reminds me very much of "Centaur", the man who abused me when I was a child, see: https://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2012/09/centaur.html. This is an important lesson. You may think "girlie men" are harmless, but they are not; they are highly toxic and dangerous. They actually are capable of physical violence, but only against a victim who is even smaller and weaker; that obviously means a child. Along with the cartoon heavenly bodies, Nice Town has other special effect scenes. There is a very grotesque dream sequence in which we see Joe as a satyr. The birth scene of the baby has a distinct horror element to it; and so does its aftermath in the maternity ward. Some viewers might be disturbed by that. However, the most upsetting scenes, for me, are several which are "POV" from the newborn baby, Angelica. This baby is, of course, the innocent victim caught up in the middle of a conflict she was born into and cannot comprehend. Yet in these scenes her parents both lean close to her and shout angrily in her face. That is really nasty. Towards the end of the series, Joe's malevolence gets worse and worse. Even when I saw this programme originally on TV as a much younger person, I understood what it meant and how it fitted in with my own life. Nice Town does have some good elements though. Frankie is played by Josette Simon who is very famous for Blakes 7, see: https://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2007/10/blakes-7.html. Joe and Paul's mother is played by Doreen Mantle who is a very widespread actress. You might enjoy it, so I recommend giving it a try.