Were you there at the beginning? Do you remember when Rachel pranged Adam in the supermarket car park? And how her old friend Karen - stuck alone at home with her first baby, without any support from her husband David - was slowly going round the twist? And how Pete and Jenny, mates of Adam's, were thinking of starting a family? That was five years ago. Since then, we've had several extramarital affairs, a wedding, three more children, and some fairly active receding on the hairline front. Pretty much like life, in other words.
In fact, Cold Feet, shortly returning for a fourth series, has been successful because it knows how to balance aspiration against reality. Even the admirers of ITV's flagship drama admit that, in order to appeal to as wide an audience as possible, the show is a Trojan horse. Dazzled by its glossy, handsome appearance, you might initially overlook the fact that it's packed with issues. Some time later, you'll discover you have been sucked into a comedy with a surprisingly serious baseline.
Whereas its competitors tend to get stuck on issues such as infidelity and midlife crises, Cold Feet, without a hint of worthiness, has been far bolder, gutsily tackling subjects such as abortion, infertility and cancer. With the schedules now heaving with copycats, it's worth remembering that the first series was the pit canary for thirtysomething relationship dramas, at least in the UK, and what looks familiar now (the dream sequences, the flashbacks, the playful narrative twists) was in 1997 considered revolutionary.
Yes, much of its success boils down to its easiness on the eye. At first glance, it still looks like lifestyle TV, full of good haircuts, nice kitchens and long sessions in chic bars: the reason why it was often, at its launch, mistaken for a British Friends. As with the perky New York sextet, we do not care what the characters do for a living (with the exception of David, hitherto the least-developed of the characters, who is entirely summarised by the fact that he is a management consultant). It's telling that the one character whose profession was repeatedly emphasised recently - the dotcom whizzkid who was Jenny's unlikely seducer in the last series - turned out, like the Nasdaq itself, not to be worth the investment.
Since the majority of contemporary homegrown TV dramas dealing with peer-group intrigues are based on characters who are linked by their professions - the This Life / North Square / Attachments model - this makes Cold Feet, with its constant emphasis on out-of-office-hours, seem a bit of a fairytale. The characters, even those with kids, are rich in free time. They indulge in amateur dramatics, football coaching, posh lunches, squash. They are forever coming home with shiny bags from Whistles or Selfridges, or socialising over chilled bottles, in a way that seems exotic to those who battle to get to the supermarket once a fortnight.
Perhaps they have so much time because they operate in a kind of limbo. All the couples are blissfully free of the usual baggage. They are defined entirely by their relationships with each other, rather than by the demands of work or family. Before David's birthday last series, there were no characters over 40.
On the rare occasions when there is an attempt to put them into context - Adam's stag weekend in Portrush, for instance - the cracks become conspicuous. The drama stays fresh only if hermetically sealed; when the characters venture off their home turf, they and the script seem lost. The memory of the millennium house-party debacle, when the group decamped to an isolated island, still provokes a shudder of horror: suddenly, they were nothing more than a Boden catalogue come to life, larking about on a wintry beach to a Jamie Oliver soundtrack.
This is strange, because over the last three series, Manchester, Cold Feet's home city, has barely registered. Pete and Jenny are the only characters who appear to be local, but no mention is made of their families. Hip dramas set in northern cities frequently draw on the setting for additional colour: think of the mileage that Queer as Folk and Bob and Rose got from the same metropolis, with Canal Street's overweening influence on events. Even North Square was unmistakably located in newly confident, madeover Leeds. But Cold Feet has never made use of the city in which it is set. It might as well be Bristol or Bath. (In episode one of the new series, even the social worker speaks pure Surrey.) This lack of any regional identity could be one reason why the last series pulled in nine million viewers. It's neither too southern, nor too northern, for today's tribal tastes.
The show is less interested in going out than staying in. Arriving at exactly the same moment as the explosion of interest in makeover shows and interiors mags - in the first series, Adam and Pete were forever popping off to DIY superstores - it neatly reflected the late-Nineties preoccupation with nesting. This enthusiasm for set-dressing has led to some notable blunders. The Giffords, who have always given the impression of being on their uppers (last series, Jenny was working as an undertakers' receptionist), are possibly the least likely Aga-and-bateau-lit owners ever seen on the small screen. Equally, would Karen, that relentlessly practical mother of three, really have invested in a pair of full-length cream sofas?
The issue of class, though key to the comedy, has never been addressed: a glaring omission, especially since it has always seemed extremely unlikely that Adam and Pete would really share a pint, let alone millennium eve, with a berk like David. However charming his Observer -reading wife.
The backdrop is worth analysing, because it betrays the aspirations and fears of its viewers just as much as those of its writer, Mike Bullen. Ten years after thirtysomething, he gave us a British variation on the theme of a mixed social group trying their luck as adults, and immediately struck a chord.
The script sparkled (in the first series, remember Jenny and Pete in the bathroom, disturbed by the doorbell while waiting for the result of her home-pregnancy kit? Pete: 'Expecting anybody?' Jenny: 'Dunno yet'). It was adventurously filmed (it did fantasy sequences long before Ally McBeal made them tiresome). The casting was imaginative (James Nesbitt, Fay Ripley and John Thomson were nobodies when they auditioned for the pilot). Beyond all that, it was brave, albeit in the same way that the much-mocked Kleenex-fest thirtysomething had been.
It took risks. Yes, it made jokes, and was a showcase for some great comic turns, but it also made space for tragedy. It was not afraid to tackle topics that were normally kept well away from successful upbeat prime-time dramas, let alone primetime drama on the ITV network. None of the copycat efforts - such as Wonderful You, Metropolis, Hearts and Bones, Big Bad World - were so ambitious.
Not all of the 'serious' issues fitted into the fabric of the show. Often, the juxtaposition of farce and tragedy felt uncomfortable. But somehow, the plots never went over the edge. That's what makes this next series so intriguing: the tone is different. If the first three series were about commitment - whether to move in together, get married, have kids - the new series is about things falling apart. This time around, it looks as if David and Karen, the prosperous couple with the nanny and the conservatory and hitherto the least interesting lines, will be at the forefront.
Series Four is dark: cold feet have given way to cold hearts. Whether the audiences will cope with the gear-change remains to be seen: but then, in an ITV evening schedule where risk appears to be the stuff of the devil, Cold Feet has again played the wild card, and deserves our thanks for doing so.
· Cold Feet restarts next Sunday on ITV
