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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mel O&#039;Drama" data-source="post: 198438" data-attributes="member: 23">Well, it's been at the back of my mind to drop by this thread and comment on fairly significant changes in the second series. But I've found the episodes just floating on by and last night I was surprised to find myself at series' end. And by that I mean the entire series.Earlier on in this thread I commented that I struggled with the transition from Geoffrey Palmer to Peter Bowles back in the day. And it's been similar this time round. There's the different characterisation, of course. At risk of doing the actors a disservice, all three of the leads are always recognisable in their best-known roles, with shared traits or energy between all the characters they've played. That's part of the appeal. Penelope Keith's characters have the acidic dry wit, and that no-nonsense, sensible upper middle class thing going on. Geoffrey Palmer's characters are usually aloof, slightly scatty and a little pompous, with a hint of the underdog.Peter Bowles, in particular, is always that slightly caddish, overly confident, charismatic, moustachioed charmer who is never short of a comeback. Even in, say, Lytton's Diary, which wasn't a sitcom, he was still infallibly Peter Bowles. Neville Lytton was Howard Booth was Archie Glover was Richard DeVere. You know what you're getting with Peter Bowles. And you know what you're getting with Geoffrey Palmer. And these are two different things.So when Donald Fairchild transformed from a vague, bumbling worrier to someone who was crisp and precise it's a little jarring. I find it difficult to imagine Bowles's Donald worrying about being seen outside the railway station, for instance. If anything, he's now the more confidently laid back spouse.In Executive Stress terms, I have a fondness for the Keith/Palmer pairing of the first series over and above the Keith/Bowles pairing of the latter series. They worked well together and it created a unique and special tone for the series. I also found the insecurities within the relationship more believable and engaging. There were more subtleties to explore.That's not to say I didn't enjoy the Peter Bowles episodes. As [USER=27]@Daniel Avery[/USER] mentioned  some pages ago, was an inspired bit of casting in terms of recreating a familiar energy with a new twist. To The Manor Born had been huge, and one episode remains <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_watched_television_broadcasts_in_the_United_Kingdom#Most_watched_programmes" target="_blank">the eighth most-watched TV programme of all time</a> in the UK (excluding sports and news). If Geoffrey Palmer couldn't continue (and I'd love to know more about this), then why not get Peter Bowles. It's a novelty, but there's also a clear element of stunt casting, and that became distracting.My biggest gripe with Peter Bowles's arrival was that it was at that pivotal time when the true nature of Caroline and Donald's relationship was being found out. It had boiled away for the entire first series, and on paper their Big Secret becoming public knowledge was huge. The problem was that I was still adjusting to the all-new, all-different Donald. And so this most important series of shocking revelations lost all its impact for me.I also think the series lost a little something special once the secrecy was over. I loved all the cloak and dagger stuff of travelling separately and behaving strictly as co-workers at the office. Exploring the struggle of running a company together was also fun but had less mileage, I think. The two becoming a power-couple running the company together might have made for a better end point rather than happening somewhere in the middle. Although the advantage is that because it changed the dynamics on the series it creates a separation between Palmer and Bowles. For my sanity, I view the two Donalds as different characters anyway, so the series' raison d'être changing could be viewed as complementing the recast.</blockquote>

Verification: Who played JR Ewing?