Miranda, such fun!

Miranda. Some say it holds similarities to a certain brown, yeast-based toast-topper. But, love it or hate it, series three has just finished airing at its new home of BBC One to mind-blowingly huge audiences – sometimes upwards of nine million people.
It’s old-fashioned in its use of a studio audience. It’s childish in the constant farcical catastrophes that beset our heroine week after week. Once considered a ‘cult’ hit with its relatively small fanbase, series three of Miranda has really thrust it (that’s a good word, isn’t it?) into the limelight. But was this series tremendulent, as Miranda’s boarding-school chum Tilly would say, or did it fall flat on its face as our queen of calamity so frequently does?
The first thing that struck me throughout this series is that it constantly strives for newness. Series three features serious character development that makes it seem suddenly much more real than ever before. What would happen if Miranda’s joke shop went under, something that seems increasingly likely in these times of economic uncertainty? Could she survive an office job? What if Miranda were to get a boyfriend that wasn’t her true love and local pin-up, Gary Preston? What if Gary moved on from Miranda? These questions became the crux of the series, and allow the relationship between Miranda and Gary, and her best friend Stevie, to be examined further than ever before. Similarly, her attempts at dating Mike the adorable, slightly too-perfect news reporter yielded truly cringe-worthy results.
Miranda’s mother Penny, played so brilliantly by Patricia Hodge, quickly became one of the series’ highlights for me. Take a look at her impression of a criminal to find out why – ‘Sarge. It was me wot dun it… I want a fag. I have rights!’ It is her performance that created the spectacular farce that was ‘The Dinner Party’, with her drunken insults to Mike’s dad, Valerie (a ‘Valerie Singleton’, if you will).
Stevie’s role in the series peaks during these episodes too, and her constant Heather Small impressions (“what have you done today to make you feeellll prooooud?”) are, quite frankly, hilarious. Still. The only thing missing from the series, for me, was Clive the restaurant owner. But, as the saying goes, you can’t have everything.
And now we get onto THAT question. Miranda’s numerous attempts at a relationship with Gary may have failed in the past, but it is this series in which they really come to a head. Her eventual declaration of love is perfectly timed to be as awkward as possible, and their eventual reunion intriguingly reflects the romantic classic A Brief Encounter. But we just knew their passionate moment wouldn’t last. This is the BBC, after all. And it’s heartbreaking. And, with Mike and Gary proposing within a few seconds of each other, who will Miranda choose? Unfortunately, we’ll just have to wait and see…
Miranda is pure escapism. It’s unapologetically, stupidly, embarrassingly silly. Series three has been the gift that just kept on giving. And, for half an hour each week, no matter what’s been happening in my life at the time, it has made me happy. I dare you to watch the finale without smiling once. It sees the return of absurdly posh ‘Dreamboat’ Charlie, astonishingly as Tilly’s new beau. Not only that, but it features Jason, the ‘youthful yet rugged’ hotel worker from the series’ first outing.
The latter half of the episode feels like a farewell tour – it is gratuitously self-congratulatory and painstakingly melodramatic. But is this a problem? Not in the slightest.
Such fun? Oh yes.