The Lovers! is not a great film, or even a particularly good film. It will never win awards. It is typical of the low cost British TV-based movies of the 1970s. It is really nothing more than an expended TV special. But for some reason, I have retained a copy and, every so often (when I need cheering up usually) I play this film. It has a certain innocence. Nostalgia for a age that has past. Both the leading actors are excellent and there is a host of good supporting actors. The script is hardly hilarious but there are times when the one liners bring a smile. All in all, it is a pleasant way to spend 90 odd minutes.

The lovers is the film version of Jack Rosenthals early 70s comedy series. The late great Richard Beckinsale and pretty and very talented Paula Wilcox play the title Lovers Geoffrey and Beryl . Two innocents slowly falling in and out love in the heady world of attempted promiscuity of early 70s Britain.. Both are from similar backgrounds and both slightly out of steps with there friends love lives. What I love about this film is that its wonderfully low key and strikes a chord with anyone of a certain age who has genuinely been in love.. The writing is very funny and honest. As you'd expect, The performances are brilliant all round. As in the series Beckinsales Geoffrey is shy and awkward andunsure of what he wants in life and looking for sex but also scared of the outcome. Wilcox's Beryl is a good girl look for a good man and hardly admitting that awkward Geoffrey is her type but need work. Add to this complication from the world around them and you have romantic 70s comic gold. I recommend this as a glimpse into simpler times. Love and laughter can be clever and tender without being crude or gross.

A British comedy; A story set in Manchester, England about a hesitant, inexperienced, young couple attempting to negotiate the 'permissive' society. This film is a spin-off from a British sitcom that eschewed the two TV series to tell the story of unlikely lovebirds. It is set against the backdrop of greater sexual freedoms and independence of the early 1970s with women growing in confidence and aspiring to true parity with men in their sexual and professional lives, rejecting futures dominated by marriage, motherhood and domestic drudgery. The gauche comedy is entertaining thanks to actors Richard Beckinsale and Paula Wilcox, and innocent fun for the naive and clumsy interplay and playful courting. Wilcox delightfully combines being prude with bourgeois snobbery, while Beckinsale is wonderfully vulnerable and helpless as he veers between laddism and romance nervously. The film isn't directed with much panache, and it is a slight story, but it has a quaint dialogue.