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The Café

It’s been a while, probably ten years, since we first saw The Café by Ralph Little and Michelle Terry on BBC Entertainment. This piece of British humour instantly blew us away. Not because it has unexpected twists and turns, not because it’s as brilliant as Only Fools and Horses or One Foot in the Grave, but because it gets you to a certain mood – best described as a modern, close-to-real-life but plausible fiction that immediately captivates you and keeps you hooked until the very end.

So, a few years ago, right after BBC Entertainment and the Hungarian Broadcast Supervisor Board – or something like that – couldn’t agree on a few things, BBC Entertainment was no longer among the available channels. Unless, of course, one buys a satellite antenna and subscribes to the channel. Sadly, the channel was closed in 2024, so, a piece of historical comedy broadcast is now merely part of history. 

Anyway, we wanted to buy it on DVD, but those plonkers in the UK decided not to make it available worldwide but only in Britain. We were fuming, and I cannot describe the level of indignation that shaped our faces when we learned this devastating fact. Eventually, we managed to track down a company that was selling it, but, to our horror, they were selling it to British residents only. That took the biscuit. 

Every year, before Christmas, we watch One Foot in the Grave. It became a habit. The fleeting exuberance of Victor Meldrew warms our hearts. And as the series came to its last episode we found ourselves talking about what to watch next. Somehow, The Café came up as a would-be-great-to-watch series, but we knew how limited our options were, so we started to watch Elementary instead. This is another show I’d like to write about sometime. 

For some reason, the notion of watching The Café again stuck in my wife’s head. She made a brave but seemingly hopeless attempt to buy the DVD. When she found an online store that was willing to deliver it to Hungary we were on cloud nine. We couldn’t believe it and we even thought the site was an online scam site. However, it was worth sacrificing a reasonably low amount of money to test them.

When the delivery service notified us about the parcel they put into that modern parcel collection lockers one can take their deliveries, we couldn’t believe our eyes. But it arrived safe and sound. No broken pieces or scratched DVDs in the box, so nothing prevented us from watching it. We rushed home and spent the entire weekend watching the entire 2 seasons. Who says there are no miracles?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Café_(British_TV_series)
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