Game On

A mid-90's Britcom about a trio of flatmates in their mid-twenties.

Agoraphobic Jerkass Matthew rents out his home to home to his naive, virginal school friend Martin and gorgeous, but frustrated blonde Mandy.

Though not especially outstanding and now largely forgotten, the show might be regarded as something of a bridge between the earlier and more famous Men Behaving Badly and the later Coupling in intergrating an equally (if somewhat differently expressed) dysfunctional female point of view into the show. Mandy was not a wise outsider remaining above the action, but a protagonist in her own right, fully as flawed as the men.

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Tropes used in Game On include:

• Aren't You Going to Ravish Me?: Mandy has to explain to Stoat that having a gun means he can do anything he wants to her.
• Downer Ending
• Friends Rent Control: Only Martin has a steady source of income. Matthew is unemployed (indeed incapable of leaving the flat to get a job) and Mandy is stuck in a series of poorly paying temp positions. Justified in that Matthew's parents left him some money and the house in their will.
• Ho Yay
• Looking for Love In All the Wrong Places: Mandy
• Spot of Tea: Ordered at least once an episode.
• The Nineties
• The Other Darrin: Matthew was originally played by Ben Chaplin, who left after the first season and was replaced by Neil Stuke.
  • Which is gloriously lampshaded in a post-credits sting after the first episode of the second season.
  • And which was potentially confusing, since from promo stills one might have guessed that Oliver Haden, who played Marco, was Chaplin's replacement. Haden's resemblance to Chaplin is much stronger than Stuke's.
• Ted Baxter: Mandy, whose ambition considerably outsrips her talent.
• Virginity Makes You Stupid: Martin
• Women Are Wiser: Averted. Mandy probably is somewhat more intelligent than the blokes but has a whole host of personality flaws and problems.