You've Changed

In moments of idleness and brain fade over the last week or so I've been watching Faith in the Future, a programme I'd not come across before. It was first broadcast in the late 90s, a period when (as now) we didn't have a TV licence. But now there's ITV Player et al so I can (legally) catch up.

It's a follow up to "Second Thoughts", which was the excellent radio and, later, TV comedy starring Linda Bellingham (as Faith) and James Bolam as the second time around married couple. It's by the same husband and wife team of writers Jan Etherington and Gavin Petrie.

Anyway in Faith in the Future Faith is divorced and living alone until her daugher Hannah, again played by Julia Sawalha, turns up again from Australia and moves in again.

All this is by way of a precursor to the odd thing that happens in episode 1 of series 2. There's a recurring character called Jools who's hopelessly in love with Hannah and he's pretty pathetic to be honest.

Until this episode. Hannah walks into the pub and someone says hello to her. She turns around and says:

"Jools ... I didn't recognise you, you've changed".

And he replies, "yes, I've had my hair dyed". And it's Simon Pegg.

For a minute I thought I'd gone mad. Surely I'd not watched seven episodes already without noticing that Pegg was in the show!?

Thankfully Wikipedia was my friend and revealed that Jools was played by Charlie Creed-Miles in Series 1 and Simon Pegg in Series 2 and 3.

But it certainly brings a whole new dimension to the line "you've changed". Yup. into an entirely different actor!

Later

Blimey, Series 2 is full of actors playing bit roles before they were better known: a very young Rupert Penry-Jones has just turned up for about thirty seconds as Hannah's new squeeze and the lovely Tamsin Greig popped up in the last episode for about as long.