James O'Brien

I’ve just watched a reasonably early repeat episode of “Teachers” on ABC 2.

In its early days it was a pretty good show. In fact, it was one of those shows which I watched every week. The glory days, of course, were when Andrew Lincoln played the character Simon.

Actually, if I were to draw up a Top 5 or Top 10 list of the television shows which have touched me most in the last ten years or so, two of them, without doubt, would have included Andrew Lincoln.

The first show I saw him in was on the show This Life, which screened in the mid-late 90s. In that show he played the character of Egg. Egg was a slightly flaky character in a relationship with the far more organised Milly.

I was pretty flaky myself at the time, and so I guess I related to him, even though there were other characters I found interesting including the gay boy, Warren (played by Jason Hughes) and the slightly dishy Miles (played by Jack Davenport).

But I loved them all, really, and I really looked forward to the show every week.

In Teachers, you might say there were lots of similarities between Egg and Simon. Both characters were reasonably flaky. Both had jobs they weren’t really suited to. And they were both surrounded by an ensemble of interesting characters.

But like a lot of my favourite shows over the years – Hamish Macbeth, Seachange, etc – it went a bit odd towards the end.