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Originally broadcast in 10-minute segments on BBC2, Marion &
Geoff is a very funny if at times unrelentingly bleak comedy
in which Rob Brydon plays Keith, a hapless cuckold who addresses
us via a camcorder set up in his mini-cab. The Marion and Geoff
of the title are his estranged wife and her new lover, though as
Keith--who never fails to perceive a bright side to his utterly
dismal existence--says, "I don't feel I've lost a wife, I've
gained a friend."
Through his monologues, we learn that Keith has a room in a
student house where banging techno is played day and night; that
in order to make the journey to see his two boys, he must make
an overnight journey from London to Cardiff by car; that his
only friend is a tollbooth operator (though the operator doesn't
seem to know it) and that, although he's been driving a minicab
for a while, he's yet to pick up a fare.
Keith's attempts to buy presents for his children generally
backfire ("I've kept the receipts. I learned that from my old
dad. He always used to say keep the receipts"), no more
heartrendingly so than in an evidently disastrous attempt to pay
a surprise visit to the newly attached Marion and the kids in
Disneyland. As he hugs the tiny Winnie the Pooh puppets he's
tried to give to his children, his uniformly chipper tone wavers
momentarily and the comedy threatens to darken into something
like tragedy. However, Keith's indomitable if inappropriate
optimism eventually enables him to bumble through.
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