Cold Feet

Cold Feet is a British comedy-drama television series produced by Granada Television for the ITV network. The series was created and principally written by Mike Bullen as a follow-up to his award-winning 1997 Comedy Premiere of the same name. The storyline follows three couples experiencing the ups-and-downs of romance. Adam Williams and Rachel Bradley (James Nesbitt and Helen Baxendale) are a new couple who go through dating, marriage and the birth of a child. Pete and Jenny Gifford (John Thomson and Fay Ripley) are a married couple with a newborn son; they experience parenthood, adultery, separation and eventually divorce when Jenny leaves for a job in New York. Pete starts a new relationship with Jo Ellison (Kimberley Joseph). Karen and David Marsden (Hermione Norris and Robert Bathurst) live an upper-middle-class lifestyle, employing a nanny for their son and holding dinner parties with friends. Their marriage disintegrates after each has an affair.

The series was executive-produced by Bullen with Granada's head of comedy Andy Harries, and produced by Christine Langan, Spencer Campbell and Emma Benson. 32 episodes were broadcast over five series from 15 November 1998 to 16 March 2003. The series is set in Greater Manchester and was primarily filmed there for all five years. Filming occasionally went overseas to locations such as Belfast, Paris and Sydney. To distinguish the look of the series from regular sitcoms, all episodes were shot on film stock and were overseen by directors with little television experience, creating a visual style more akin to advertisements; Jon Jones was nominated for a British Academy Television Craft Award for his work on the third series.

The show was a critical and ratings success for ITV, which has struggled to recapture Cold Feet's kind of audience since the series ended. Critics analysed the depiction of social issues, the use of popular music, and the relevance of the series to contemporary audiences when compared to the big-budget BBC costume dramas Vanity Fair (1998) and The Way We Live Now (2001). Mike Bullen's style of writing has served as inspiration to British screenwriters Danny Brocklehurst and Sanjeev Kohli. The series was a regular nominee at the British Comedy Awards—at which it won four out of five "Best TV Comedy Drama" nominations—the National Television Awards, and television societies worldwide. It has been broadcast in over 34 countries and has been remade for local audiences in the United States and European countries. Merchandise, including soundtracks, DVDs and spin-off books, has been released.