Same Time Next Year

Synopsis

Same Time, Next Year is a romantic comedy about an adulterous love affair taking place only once a year. George, a New Jersey accountant, picks up Doris, a bored housewife, in a California Inn in 1951 and they agree to meet once a year from then on. During the time they spend with each other they discuss the births, deaths and marital problems each is experiencing at home whilst adapting themselves to the social changes affecting their lives. Same Time, Next Year was adapted into a successful film in 1978, which was nominated for 4 Oscars and for 4 Golden Globes winning 1.

Our Review:

12 January 2007

George and Doris have been together for twenty-five years. But they’re not celebrating their Silver Wedding. For they’ve spent a total of only twenty-five weekends together – an annual tryst both have honoured and looked forward to since they first pledged to share every anniversary of the first morning they awoke in bed together after a drunken fling!

Over the years, the room in the country inn where they meet does not change, but the couple are changed and indeed buffeted by their varying fortunes, from the ups and downs of their respective marriages to the encroaching of the outside world of war and politics on their lives – and of course by the years, as they grow older more or less gracefully.

Bernard Slade’s 1970s comedy has a delicate sweetness that some might call slight. The well-timed one-liners smack of the best of US sitcoms – Frasier comes to mind – and indeed Slade’s credits include the hit TV series The Partridge Family.

Same Time ...