Agony

1970s British tv comedy series

Jane Lucas is an "agony aunt" in Person magazine, where she tries to solve other people problems, although her own life is far from being perfect.

Jane Lucas is an "agony aunt" in Person magazine, where she tries to help the readers with their problems involving relationships, sex, marriage and general life problems. Concentrated on her career in magazine, radio and solving other people’s problems she didn’t realize that her own marriage was falling apart until her husband, therapist Laurance, suddenly had left her. With help of her best friends, a guy couple Michael and Rob, and her secretary Val, Jane tries to cope with the new situation.

Agony was co-created by Anna Raeburn, who was "agony aunt" for different radio stations between 1970s and early 2000s, which gave the series more realistic view on the media and what "agony aunts" had to deal with in real life. The episodes were showing the struggles of Jane with her own life, her marriage, which moved between different stages, her unplanned pregnancy, her domineering mother, but also problems linked to people she was trying to help.

Back in 1979 Agony was a ground-breaking sitcom, since it included quite few taboo topics, like homosexuality, cannabis, suicide, cross-dressing, racism, child abduction. On that front the series was full of material, but unfortunately it was struggling in every other department. The comedy behind the story was average at best moments and to be fair there were not many comedic moments to begin with. The characters were a mixed bag - some were quite interesting, but most of them (including the main character) were just one-dimensional and quite forgettable.

Agony is hard to describe - it is mixture of really serious topics with not great comedy elements, some scenes were very down-to-earth with sudden one-liner dropped into it, which not always gave a good result. The story itself was rather loose, the characters were constantly changing without reasoning behind it and overall series was a bit of a mess - in some parts it was drama, in some comedy-drama, in some goofy attempts into comedy. But one is quite sure - Agony was one of the most depressing sitcoms in history.

Rating	5.2
Funny	3 / 10
Entertaining	3 / 5
Characters	3 / 5
Nonrepetitive	4 / 5