 Just Good Friends
1 9 8 3 - 1 9 8 6 (UK)
22 x 30 minute episodes
 In the summer of 1976 Penny Warrender and Vince Pinner meet at
a Rolling Stones concert in Hyde Park, London.
After a stormy two-year courtship they finally plan to get
married but, just two days before the event, Vince gets a severe
case of cold feet, hops on his motorbike and rides off into the
sunset, leaving Penny broken-hearted.
Five years later they meet again, by chance, and Penny (to her
horror) finds that the old attraction is still there. Although
they insist on remaining 'just good friends' the old feelings
quickly resurface and for the run of the series they conduct a
love-hate, on-again-and-off-again affair.
Neither is helped in this venture by their respective parents,
Penny's snobbish mother and unemployed father, and Vince's
embarrassingly raucous mum and dad.
Paul Nicholas and Jan Francis played the lovers stretching the
"Will they, won't they" theme stretched over three
series before finally tying the knot.
Writer John Sullivan intended to end the series with the 1984
Christmas special, in which Penny split with Vince for what she
said was the final time and flew off to Paris, leaving Vince with
the half-intended pact that they should meet again on the Eiffel
Tower three years later.
But viewers like a happy ending and two years later Sullivan
brought the couple back for one final shot where we met a
different Penny - gone were the pangs of self-doubt, the young
woman going nowhere, having been replaced by a successful career
woman working in Paris.
Only one aspect of her old character remained - the incurable,
destructive yet indestructible attraction to Vince. So they
satisfied their public and married at last, destined to always be
more than 'just good friends'.
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