When the British comedy drama Cold Feet returned to Australian television screens last week it was with all the original cast bar one.
Helen Baxendale – who played new mother Rachel Bradley, mown down by a truck in the final episode of the last series in front of 9 million moist-eyed fans – turned down an early script in which she was briefly written back in as a ghostly memory haunting Adam, her on-screen husband played by James Nesbitt.
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Trailer: Cold Feet Season 6
13 Years Later. The gang is reunited when Adam turns up in Manchester to announce his impending marriage, but not everyone is as thrilled as he is.
In hindsight, the show's writer, Mike Bullen, admits he was being overly sentimental. "She was very sweet about it but just said she didn't feel she wanted to come back, and in retrospect I'm glad she took that view because we would have jumped the shark if we had the ghost of Rachel popping up."
The remaining cast of Nesbitt, Fay Ripley (Jenny), John Thomson (Pete), Hermione Norris (Karen) and Robert Bathurst (David) also needed persuading to reprise their roles as friends from middle-class Manchester now approaching age 50.
![Mike Bullen wanted to make a TV show that dealt with male depression.](/web/20161014164129im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/r/y/m/m/3/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.grvd2o.png/1476420436507.jpg)
"I did meet each of the actors individually to talk them through the plans I had because they all wanted to be reassured that it wasn't going to damage their careers," Bullen says.
Nesbitt was enthusiastic. Norris, godmother to Bullen's younger daughter, was the most reluctant: "She thought, 'This is a really bad idea, we should leave it alone', but when she read the script she could see what I was banging on about, that there was something we could say about this stage of life."
The series about three 30-something couples living in middle-class Manchester picks up 12 years later after Rachel's death. Adam flies in to Manchester from Singapore after years of working abroad to tell his old friends and teenage son that he is going to marry a billionaire's daughter, 18 years his junior.
There are gags at the expense of Nesbitt's hair transplant, dates on Tinder and Pete's second job driving cabs, which segues neatly into this series' serious theme of male depression.
![Adam Williams (James Nesbitt) with new love Angela (Karen David).](/web/20161014164129im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/r/q/o/i/f/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.grvd2o.png/1476420436507.jpg)
Bullen is writing from experience: "I didn't manage to fall into the abyss but I did peek over its rim to its depths," he admits.
Actor John Thomson had his own battles with addiction in the intervening years and brings a quiet intensity to the subject.
![The old gang returns to tackle the dilemmas of middle age.](/web/20161014164129im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/r/v/r/n/y/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.grvd2o.png/1476420436507.jpg)
Exploring the comedic and dramatic potential of middle age is what finally enticed Bullen to revive Cold Feet, and he is pleased with its reception among fans and critics: "I thought that was an interesting place to explore," he says. "Adults getting their lives back and having a good 25-30 years of active life ahead of them but not being quite sure how to fill it."
Bullen's starting point was Nesbitt's character. "Adam has always been a slight reflection of me, and like me he has been looking for a place to call home. Rachel was home to him but she's dead and so he's been dragging his son around the world looking for something he hasn't really found. And this is what this series is really about: What is home and how do you define yourself?"
![James Nesbitt was enthusiastic for a Cold Feet reboot.](/web/20161014164129im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/r/u/7/5/f/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.grvd2o.png/1476420436507.jpg)
Bullen migrated to Sydney before the final episode went to air in 2003. "I've decided home is my family and geography is secondary to that," he says.
He is waiting for the green light for a second season. Since its UK debut, the show's ratings have held strong at more than 4.5 million viewers. ITV is under no particular pressure to make an announcement, as the actors are all optioned for a second series, but Bullen is hopeful.
"This year I've been to a school reunion, a university reunion and the Cold Feet reunion and they were all the same," he says. "You go along thinking, 'Is this really a good idea? Do I really want to see these people again or should I have left it all alone?', and then you walk in and immediately you leave all those misgivings at the door.
"The Cold Feet reunion was like that. The [actors] all said the same thing, they felt quite nervous and within minutes they were just straight back into the old ways of relating to each other and it was joyful and I think that comes through in the show. It's like these characters have never been been away at all."
WHAT Cold Feet
WHEN Seven, Tuesday, 8.45pm