This Life is a BBC television drama that was produced by World Productions and screened on BBC Two. Two series were broadcast from 18 March 1996 to 7 August 1997, with a later reunion special on 2 January 2007. It centres on a group of law graduates in their twenties, embarking upon their careers while sharing a house in south London. There are no courtroom scenes in either the first or second series, and only one brief scene in the TV sequel.
The show became a popular word-of-mouth hit and was included on BFI's list of the 100 greatest British television programmes.
Contents
Production
The series was created by Amy Jenkins, who was also its principal writer. Other writers contributed scripts, including Joe Ahearne (who also directed some episodes—the only person to do both on the series), Ian Iqbal Rashid, Amelia Bullmore, and Matthew Graham. Tony Garnett was the executive producer and Jane Fallon worked as a producer on both series.
Broadcast
The first series premiered in 1996. It was neither a critical nor a ratings success. It was only its repeat run of the first series, beginning 2 January 1997, then every Wednesday evening from 3 January in a post-Newsnight slot, that the show really began to attract serious, but still relatively moderate, viewer attention. This rerun ran smoothly into the start of the new second series, from Monday 17 March 1997, restored to its peak-time slot, by which time it was attracting praise as a cult hit. By the time the second series ended, the show was attracting strong audience figures for a BBC Two show of around four million, and became a national talking point, regularly making headlines in both tabloid and broadsheet newspapers.
Both of the series were then repeated late-night from 12 June to 2 August 2000.
Another screening of the first series only was shown on Sunday evenings between 30 March and 13 July 2003. As a run-in to the reunion, the BBC repeated every episode, two each night Monday to Thursday, starting 6 November 2006, on BBC Two.
In March 2013, the entire series including This Life +10 and That Life (a short documentary about the reunion special) was made available via Virgin On Demand.
From 3 February 2020, series one of This Life was repeated on BBC4, carrying a dedication to its executive producer, Tony Garnett, who had died aged 83 during the previous month.
To celebrate the show’s 30th anniversary on 18 March 2026, it was repeated on BBC Four.
Episodes
Series one (1996)
This Life is based around life in a London law firm and barristers' chambers of trainee solicitors and pupil barristers, but is essentially a character-driven drama.
Egg and Milly have been dating since they were at university, but their career choices create tension between them. Conscientious Milly is ambitious, spending a lot of time working with her older boss Mr O'Donnell. Egg suffers a crisis of dissatisfaction with a career in law, and soon resigns from the firm.
Anna and Miles had a brief fling at university, and Anna is fixated on the indifferent Miles. Their love–hate relationship makes their work and home life frequently tense.
The other housemate Warren is a gay man. He spends some time dealing with issues around his sexuality, especially in relation to coming out to friends and family. In an unusual plot device, he is frequently seen discussing his feelings with a therapist who is heard and only rarely seen by the viewer.
Miles appears sometimes to dislike Warren, and subjects him to occasional homophobic abuse when angered. Miles's manipulative girlfriend, the drug-addicted and bulimic Delilah, moves in with him. This results in conflict in the house. When Miles, who has not been practising safe sex with Delilah, discovers that she is still sleeping with her heroin addict ex, Truelove, he has an HIV scare. Milly clashes with Egg over his perceived lack of ambition, and becomes attracted to O'Donnell.
Series two (1997)
During the second series, storylines were expanded to include other connected characters. These included Ferdy (Ramon Tikaram), briefly Warren's boyfriend; Rachel (Natasha Little) a new junior trainee at Milly's law firm; and Francesca, Miles's girlfriend and later fiancée. Previously secondary characters Jo (Steve John Shepherd) and Warren's cousin, Kira (Luisa Bradshaw-White) feature more heavily as they embarked upon a relationship. Moore Spencer Wright receptionist Kelly (Sacha Craise) also became much more prominent. Ferdy was a bisexual character, seen as a replacement for Warren when Jason Hughes decided to leave the show (he did return for the final scene). Finding a relationship with Anna impossible, Miles began a relationship with Francesca, a woman nearly a decade older than he was. Miles proposed to Francesca, but still harboured feelings for Anna.
Rachel had a long-running passive-aggressive feud with Milly, although on the surface the pair were able to work together without mention of their mutual dislike. Milly's dislike of Rachel was very strong, viewing her as a threat to her relationship with O'Donnell, and disliking her apparently perfect demeanour. Milly confided in Anna that she found Rachel almost suffocatingly "nice". The tension between the two went unresolved throughout the second series, culminating in the final scene, in the episode "Apocalypse Wow!" At Miles and Francesca's wedding reception, after Milly learns that Rachel has told Egg of her affair with O'Donnell, Milly punches Rachel in the face.
This Life + 10 (2006)
In 2006, the BBC reconvened the original cast for a special one-off 80-minute special, looking at what had happened to the lead characters in the intervening ten years. The episode begins with the original five housemates reuniting for Ferdy's funeral. Milly and Egg are together, though not married, and have had a young son, but Miles is divorced from Francesca and has a new Vietnamese wife, Me Linh. The circumstances of both Ferdy's death and Miles's divorce are not revealed.
This new episode was entitled + 10 onscreen, and kept the original title sequence and programme title This Life. It was screened on 2 January 2007, and was a co-production between BBC Wales and the original producers World Productions. This Life + 10 was written by Jenkins, directed by Ahearne and produced by Garnett. It gained 3.5 million viewers, with a 14% audience share.
Cast
Guest cast
The Office and Sherlock star Martin Freeman appears in the first episode of the second series, pictured stealing money from Milly and Egg's bedroom after a party, and accidentally drinking Egg's urine from a can, believing it to be beer.
Ralph Ineson, also from The Office, featured in an early episode as a client of Milly, as the character Jessop.
EastEnders actor Nitin Ganatra appeared in an episode of the second series playing a prospective housemate who manages to upset Milly.
Another later well-known actor appearing early in the second series is Martin Hancock, who went on to star in Coronation Street as Spider, followed by Holby City as Reg Lund.
Clare Clifford played lesbian lawyer Sarah Newly who propositions Anna in episode five of the first series.
Stuart Organ, best known as Mr Robson in Grange Hill, appeared as a flasher in the first series.
Jodie Whittaker, later the Thirteenth Doctor in Doctor Who, plays Clare in This Life +10.
Characters
This Life initially featured a core cast of five main characters sharing a rented house in Southwark, with a supporting cast drawn from their professional and private lives.
Main cast
Egg (series 1–2 & +10 special)
Born Edgar Cooke in Manchester, Egg is an English graduate with a conversion in law, and is in a full-time relationship with girlfriend Milly. At the beginning of the series he interviews for, and is successful in gaining, a junior position with solicitors firm Moore Spencer Wright. Egg met Milly at university and they have been in a solid relationship since then. In the first series, Egg struggles to fit in at his legal firm, feeling demotivated by the tedium of the job. Early in the series, he is assigned one of his boss's clients as a case, but the client, who has cancer, dies by unexpectedly taking his own life and Egg realises law is not for him, quitting the firm midway through series 1. After brief stints attempting to write a novel and working at telesales, from which he is fired for going off-script after only one day on the job, Egg finds his passion early in series 2 when he gets a job in a café working alongside single mum Nicki. Enjoying the work, despite the low pay, Egg decides to purchase the café after its owner Mrs Cochrane moves to Ireland and puts it up for sale.
Egg also has challenges with his family – his father, Jerry, visits from Manchester and reveals that his mother has been having an affair with a family friend, although they are later reconciled in the second series. It is revealed also that Egg is a keen football fan and supports Manchester United.
Egg's relationship with Milly is initially strained in the first series – she is unhappy with his lack of motivation and being the sole breadwinner after he quits his job, although they rekindle their passion after a therapy session and have sex for the first time in months in the final episode of series 1. Throughout the second series, Egg spends less time with Milly owing to their increased time at their respective jobs. Milly begins an affair with O'Donnell, which is revealed via Rachel at the climax of the second series at Miles' wedding; a devastated Egg splits from Milly.
Ten years later, Egg is a successful author, and he and Milly have reconciled and have a young son called Oscar. Milly and Egg again are close to separation, but a series of events make them realise they deeply care for each other and they remain together.
Milly (series 1–2 & +10 special)
Music
An unknown Ricky Gervais, partner of producer Jane Fallon, was credited as "Music Advisor" for the series, and commissioned the theme tune written by The Way Out. In 2000, BBC Music issued a compilation CD featuring the theme tune and songs from the 1990s by bands including Blur, The Charlatans, The Lightning Seeds, Pulp, Jamiroquai, Manic Street Preachers, Suede, Oasis, The Divine Comedy, Everything but the Girl, New Order, Skunk Anansie, The Clash, Happy Mondays, The Prodigy, and Supergrass.
Legacy
The second series ended with a close-up of an advert for the house, and the original intention was to re-cast with new characters. The provocative stage writer Mark Ravenhill was involved in drafting storylines and early scripts for a third series, but the plans were aborted, and the decision was taken to end the programme "on a high".
In 1998, Adam Buxton and Joe Cornish parodied This Life in their sketch show The Adam and Joe Show
In 2001, NBC broadcast a loosely adapted American remake titled First Years. It attracted scathing reviews and low ratings.
The young production team behind This Life went on to further success:
Jane Fallon went on to become Executive Producer on the Channel 4 series Teachers, which also starred Andrew Lincoln.
Joe Ahearne later went on to write and direct the cult Channel 4 series Ultraviolet (1998), which also starred Jack Davenport. He also directed episodes of the first series of the revived Doctor Who in 2005.
Matthew Graham co-created the BBC One series Life on Mars (2006) and has written episodes of Hustle, Spooks, and three episodes of Doctor Who, one in 2006 and two in 2011.
Ian Iqbal Rashid went on to write and direct the feature films Touch of Pink (Sony Pictures Classics, 2004) and How She Move (Paramount Vantage, 2008). He is also writer and executive producer on the Peabody Award winning series Sort Of (CBC/HBO Max, 2020–2024).