Cold Feet: The Best Bits so Far

The comedy-drama Cold Feet, which followed a group of 30 somethings as they navigated love, loss and life in Manchester, had millions hooked when it aired in the ‘90s. There was nothing quite like it. With a sharp wit and humour, but a true to life darkness, the show’s fiercely loved characters tackled everything from adultery and abortion to alcoholism while maintaining the close friendships that came to define the show.

This year the cast reunited for a sixth season, thirteen years on from the traumatizing season five finale left viewers all over the nation bereft, as they witnessed one of its cherished characters die following a brutal car crash.

Tensions ran high, but trepidation led way to nostalgic glee as the nation watched Jenny, Pete, Karen and Adam come to life again as if they’d never left. Very few shows could pull off an ambitious stunt like this with such finesse, and to celebrate Cold Feet Series Six arriving on DVD, let’s recall the highlights of the collection so far.

COMPETITION: Win Cold Feet: The Complete Sixth Series on DVD

Warning: spoilers if you haven’t yet binged.

Season 1 highlights

• Simply the entire Pilot episode. Adam and Rachel meeting by bumping their cars in a Tesco carpark and exchanging insults. Adam storming off because Rachel ironed his shirts, then serenading her naked with a rose up his bum. Just all of it. A masterclass in farcical comedy-drama that was to set the tone for years to follow.

• When Adam hired a Mexican band to play on the fire escape outside Rachel’s fancy office to celebrate their one year anniversary of the first time they had sex.

• Adam borrowing Pete’s mobile, only reserved for Jenny’s labour, and having to go on a race against time to try and track Pete down to make it in time for the birth. It takes a mini driving onto a golf course, a very confused cab driver, a dramatic leap over a patient’s bed and a police motorbike to get him there.

• When Rachel and Adam have finally achieved domestic bliss, only for Adam to discover Rachel has an estranged musician husband called Kris (played by Lennie James). A long drawn out request for a divorce ends up with him temporarily moving in with them, making everything very awkward.

Season 2 Highlights

• An emotional Brief Encounter style ending at the end of season 1 meant Adam and Rachel are single for most of this season. Rachel dates a 21 year old megababe called Danny (played by Hugh Dancy) and enjoys a brief fling before it fizzles out because he finds her friends boring.

• Rachel also has her socks charmed off by David’s handsome younger brother (played by True Blood’s Stephen Moyer) while Adam has a terrible time with a Lonely Hearts column in the days before Tinder (“It’s called meeting place, actually” he insists).

• Karen experiencing an epiphany about her conventional middle class existence by lighting up a spliff at a boring dinner party, getting a tattoo and giving her designer dresses to charity, “this wardrobe implies a woman who is impressed by wealth, well I am not that shallow”.

• Rachel shows her love for Adam by acquiescing his request to get in the bath with him when she’s fully clothed. It might not be quite naked serenading but it’s pretty cute nonetheless.

• When the gang hire a spectacular castle for the millennium and Adam and Pete nearly get stranded out to sea on a little boat – a near-death precursor to their in store robbery in season six – before realising that actually it’s all fine because the water only goes up to their ankles.

Season 3 Highlights

• Pete briefly dating David and Karen’s nanny, Ramona. An unlikely pairing if there ever was one, and Jenny dating a vacuous multi-millionaire called Robert who fills her house with flowers.

• When Rachel proposes to Adam at an art gallery it’s totally beautiful. And in fact, Jo proposes to Pete while on a boat in Sydney in S4. Screw gender norms.

• When Rachel, Karen and Jenny go to a fancy spa retreat for Rachel’s hen do, only to get bored and raid the mini bar, and a game of truth or dare reveals Jenny snogged Adam once, leaving all hell to break loose.

• The episode when the guys go to Belfast for a weekend for Adam’s stag do, and Adam’s beautiful ex comes face to face with his Irish past, and a beautiful ex-girlfriend almost tempts him out of monogamy.

Season 4 Highlights

• Karen’s troubling relationship with alcohol and the moment she admits she needs help is stunningly executed and performed.

• The well-played tension between Karen and Mark (played by Sean Pertwee) the publisher she meets at a party and immediately connects with.

• When gorgeous Australian Jo, Pete’s new love interest, attempts to take David and Pete for a run but they end up throwing up and calling cabs.

• The killer moment when it’s revealed that Karen had been having an affair, and how crushed David is, because he’s been looking into buying her a spectacular house overlooking the Sydney harbour. Not surprising that this tense and moving as hell season finale won a BAFTA.

Season Five: Highlights

• When Adam takes his baby son to a mother and baby singalong, bemused by everyone’s sickening cheeriness and unable to keep up with their weird singing rules.

• The heart-felt reunion between Adam and his estranged father, who he discovers is actual bisexual and left his mother for a man rather than a woman. They reunite and hug. Hurrah for bi-visibility.

• The moment when Pete stands up and says “she owed me a tenner” at Rachel’s funeral, causing a snigger from Adam on the worst day of his life. A little light amidst the darkness.

• The varied and powerful portrayals of grief in the aftermath of Rachel’s death. Adam feigning cheeriness until he sees his little boy crawl for the first time, and Karen breaking down in the supermarket after Tunnock’s caramel wafers jog memories. Then there’s the poignant atmosphere of the scattered ashes scene at Portmeirion. Heart-breaking.

Season Six: Highlights

• When David is forced to downgrade to a cheap hotel following his separation from Robyn, asks after a Spa only to find it’s actually a Spar shop, so he buys a Pot Noodle instead. Comically bleak. Oh David.

• When Karen chucks clingy millionaire Eddie and tells him where to go. Oh, and when she tells her patronizing boss where to go, and tells David’s nasty ex-wife where to go, and both Eddie and David where to go after their consecutive marriage proposals and their pathetic fight on a Twister mat. And when she seduces her super-hot and far younger business partner. Go Karen, go!

• The moment when Jenny discovers that Pete is depressed, and holds him as he cries into her shoulder on their sofa. Poignant and delicately handled. It’s also the writer Mike Bullen’s favourite scene of the series.

• When Pete punches Jenny’s smarmy ex-lover Grant (played by Robert Webb). Classic Cold Feet, nailing the comedy violence.

• The entire finale, because any episode which includes a hold up in a supermarket, a blossoming romance, a coming out story, and concludes on a roof terrace overlooking Manchester has to be a winner.

Cold Feet Series 6 is distributed by ITV Studios Global Entertainment and is available to now from Amazon.co.uk and iTunes.