Kenny's Renaissance

I was an enormous fan of Steven Moffat’s Press Gang as a lass. I was the right age and the right kind of academically focused girl to enjoy that programme.

(I’ve mentioned this before, I know: I may be either repetitive or narrow in my interests. I leave it to posterity to judge.)

But one effect of this interest is my delight in the current renaissance of Lee Ross, or Linda’s long-suffering best friend, Kenny (at least until he moved to Australia late in the show’s run.)

Kenny was a lovely character: he was clever, sweet, and efficient. He put up with Linda because he really loved her, despite her abrasive personality. He managed to woo a young Sadie Frost, albeit via the ghost of her drug-addicted brother. And then he sang in one episode, and all the fans who had a soft spot for a musician were smitten all over again.

So I’ve been really thrilled to see Kenny in a number of things, recently. According to imdb.com, he’s been working regularly since Press Gang, but I’ve not seen him in anything.

But over the last year or so, I’ve seen him in The Catherine Tate Show, in Life on Mars, in Hustle—admittedly, four-year-old episodes of Hustle, but I’ve come to that show fairly late—and in Robin Hood.

Admittedly, he was a fairly unpleasant character in Life on Mars, who quite rightly got punched in the mouth by both Gene Hunt and Sam Tyler. And his Sir Jasper in Robin Hood wasn’t a pleasant man, either. The sketches he took part in for The Catherine Tate Show were simply bizarre. About the only redeeming character was Hustle: sure, he was a conman, but then so are the protagonists, and we sympathise with them.

But then, I don’t really mind that the characters are so far removed from sweet, hen-pecked Kenny.

I just like seeing Kenny back on the screen.