Ever Decreasing Circles
 Ever
Decreasing Circles reunited actor Richard Briers with the
writers of his huge hit The Good Life.
But here, instead of
playing an amiable idealist, he was cast as the awful Martin
Bryce, an anally retentive, interfering know-all and ceaseless,
do-gooding, tradition-loving organiser who tried the patience of
all his neighbours and acquaintances but especially tested his
wife Ann's endurance.
In time-honoured but inexplicable sitcom fashion, she suffered
without ever throttling him, emigrating or trying to have him
committed.
Martin worked for Mole Valley Valves and had done so for years.
He also ran many clubs and societies and was a relentless volunteer and supporter of every
cause going.
He undoubtedly meant well, but he was the type of
insufferable bore who has four different kinds of spade in his
garage and who changes the water in his car battery every three
days.
Pitiful the lead character may have been, but viewing audiences
somehow identified with him, and the series proved very
popular.
 The
nub of the show, beyond the fact that Martin was a crushing bore,
was the threat he felt from his new next-door neighbour, Paul
Ryman, a handsome and super-smooth bachelor who, just by doing
nothing, made Martin look and feel inferior - and, of course,
Martin never did nothing, digging himself deeper and deeper into
holes from which he refused to emerge.
They all lived in a cosy suburban close in Horsham - a little
patch of greenery tucked away in a quiet corner of England - with
Martin's well-meaning but a trifle sad friends Howard and his wife
Hilda (they usually wore identical clothes) taking part in most of
his endeavours.
It was obvious to all that a truer scenario would have pitched
Paul and Ann as husband and wife, trying to put up with their
obsessive neighbour Martin.
But, despite an obvious closeness,
Paul and Ann's friendship never quite ripened in this way and -
while she should have run off with him and been done with Bryce
for ever - she remained the faithful wife.
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