It’d be interesting to know if Free Agents was always headed towards the deeper waters it ended up in with the series finale, or if that was a surprise to writer Chris Niel.  I’m betting that he always knew that there was richer emotional territory to explore with his two leads, Sharon Horgan and Stephen Mangan, but surprised himself when he got there.  Maybe, maybe not.

At any rate, this has been a flawed but nonetheless engaging series.  What you’ve got is two characters who have become more three dimensional as time has gone on, playing against a backdrop of amusing caricatures.  Helen and Alex work together, and have slept together a couple of times, which what with her mourning her fiance’s death and him just becoming a single dad has confused their relationship.  He’s hung up on her, she’s determined to break away from him…only she ends up offering him her spare room to stay in.  * sigh *

Of these contradictions are human beings made, and with some pretty sharp writing and stong performances that’s what makes Free Agents interesting.  Only, is that dynamic an inherently funny one?  Well, tv comedies can develop from some pretty twisted dynamics — the tortured father and son double act of Steptoe and Son, the tormented marriage of Sybil and Basil Fawlty.

So there’s every reason to believe this relationship can work, comedically.  Only, I’m not convinced that Niel believes that.  Hence the somewhat shoehorned business of boss Anthony Head and his incredible sexual obsessions: remember that incredible can mean implausible.  And I suspect the temptation is to cut to Anthony whenever there’s a danger of the relationship between Alex and Helen getting too serious: easier to do another sex toy gag than risk alienating the beery Friday night audience with couple trauma.

It would have been easier for Niel had he opted for a different tone: Cold Feet is justifiably remembered for its depiction of contemporary relationships betwen professionals.  But Free Agents is pitched before the couples do the settling down thing, at that stage where neurosis and insecurity are even more pronounced and become reasons for not settling down: the blinkers are off.

For all that, there’s still a credible connection between the two leads.  Their incoherent irrational behaviour with one another is entirely credible, and not in a contrived fashion that makes you want to bash their heads together so they can see what they mean to each other and settle down.  They’re more interesting than that, and it seems pretty feasible that either Alex or Helen could end up pairing off with the knock-offs they’ve respectively acquired over the six episodes.

This being the finale, things come to a head.  Helen and Alex realise that they are drawn to one another, and it’s done believably…except once again for the backdrop of Anthony Head marrying a prostitute.  There is, presumably, a point being made here about the comparative nature of their relationships, but it doesn’t bear much investigation.  And Head’s performance is perfectly and predictably fine: it just seems to belong to a different show than the rest of the script.

It’ll be interesting to see where Free Agents goes if it’s commissioned again.  Bring the pair together and you lose at least some of the show’s unique selling point: instead it metamorphoses into a sour Terry & June.  And I’m not sure the world needs that.  But can the series survive if the two of them are kept arbitrarily apart for the sake of the concept?  Watch this space…