My Favourite Couple

I’ll tell you who I like from tv. I like those two from Extras, Andy and Maggie (Ricky Gervais and Ashley Jensen). I like how they make fun of each other, sometimes gently, sometimes cruelly, but call each other late at night and talk about nothing like best friends. They’re so relaxed around each other, and they want to make one another laugh.

I also like Gavin and Stacey from Gavin and Stacey, but even more than them, their sharp-edged best friends, especially the chain-smoking woman dressed in black. Those two make a great couple, circling each other, him agitated and not making eye contact, her gazing steadily into the middle distance. (And the actors who play them were funny on the DVD special features.)

In movies, I always found the couple in Room with a View extremely sexy, and the opening sequence of Up made me cry. I wish Up had been more about that couple rather than about all those dogs. All those dogs bothered me, like a nightmare or madness.

In books, I like CC and Shrimp from Rachel Cohn’s Gingerbread and its sequels. I also like this very old couple in an Alice Munro story that I once read, only I can’t remember its name. There was a moment of such tenderness right at the end of the story. I like many couples from the short stories and novels of Carol Shields – older couples again, with chipped and damaged relationships, who are now intertwined and enormously grateful for each other. But my favourite Carol Shields book is about a younger couple, The Republic of Love, the two characters drawing closer and closer together, along a stream of lively, lyrical, funny, warm prose.

Finally, at the moment, I am very keen on Jackson Brodie from the Kate Atkinson novels. Not him in a couple, but single, as I wouldn’t mind ending up with him myself.

Thanks so much Jaclyn. I must just add my own two cents and second Jackson Brodie as a truly wonderful character, and Kate Atkinson as a spell binding writer.

Tomorrow I’ll be doing a round up and then on the 22nd I’ll be picking the winner, or random.org will be. So there is still time to enter!