The apparent intimacy between the two has not gone unnoticed; Maisie speculates to Harry that Gwen and Arthur's son, now living in America, seems to bear more of a likeness to Tom than his presumed father.
At the memorial service, Arthur and Tom sit upfront with Gwen and, to Maisie's amazement, both men console her by placing a hand on her shoulder.
While many of these captions simply describe the scene taking place — "At the pub", "After the funeral", and so on — there are also instances where Adrian uses the intertitles to explicitly reference the tone and undercurrent of particular sequences.
Canned laughter is also frequently heard in several instances throughout the play, most notably in the pre-title sequence where Tom addresses the camera to asks the viewer, "You wouldn't believe I'm 57, would you?"
Harry's chagrin at the constant sound of traffic outside his bedroom window leads him to recall a simpler, slower pace of life before "the erosion of people by progress".
[2] Harry and Tom are not the only characters who dwell on the past; Arthur's encounter with the canvasser at the start of the play leads him to consider the nature of sex in light of the permissive society with a sense of cynical outrage, while the conclusion of the piece, where Gwen encourages Tom and Arthur to overcome their differences, offers both an acceptance of a more liberal, relaxed age and an attempt to rekindle a past innocence.
[3] Martin Jackson's rather more positive review for the Daily Express stated that despite the play's "marvellously observed characters", Adrian's "gift for comedy" and Saville's "strikingly photographed" direction, he lamented "the erosion of the simple art of storytelling";[4] this sentiment was shared by several other critics.
The Guardian's Peter Fiddick was more enthusiastic, however, and praised its "miraculous combination of precise characterisation and dialogue and bold television technique".
[7] The subject of enforced, or even accidental, polygamy is explored in several Rhys Adrian works — most notably Evelyn (1969; adapted for television in 1971), which features two lovers engaged in an extra-marital and over-crowded affair.