The population of the tiny Scottish island of Ronansay is ageing. It’s just a matter of time until it dies out completely. The crisis comes to breaking point when the education authority threatens to close Ronansay’s primary school at the end of the current term... unless more pupils enrol to keep it open. And so the islanders decide to find some extra children. This is the chance of a lifetime for Abby Wallace, a single mother living on a housing estate in London with her two young children. Life’s opportunities are passing them by and Ronansay’s advertisement is the answer to their dreams. But there’s one problem: no husband. So Abby’s best friend Kenny, agrees to pretend to be Abby’s husband and soon Abby, her children, Alfie and Charley, and Kenny are on their way to Ronansay. Abby is transformed from anonymous council-dweller to proprietor of a bed and breakfast. She’s also the local curiosity and she’s loving every minute of it. But keeping up the charade of marriage isn’t easy, especially when the local salmon farmer takes a shine to her. Although Abby has to learn things the hard way, she’s determined to make a go of it on Ronansay. She has found her two thousand acres of sky and she’ll work hard to keep it...

Two Thousand Acres of Sky passed me by when it was originally broadcast on TV. It was only a couple of years ago, when my girlfriend asked me if I'd seen it, that I managed to got hold of a copy of all the episodes. We'd been watching Doc Martin, and my other half said that it reminded her (a little) of Two Thousand Acres of Sky - in that it deals with someone moving from the city to the countryside. She hadn't watched it all, but said she'd always wished she had.

In this respect, it's also very similar to the BBC's Down to Earth (2000-2005). However, in Two Thousand Acres of Sky the location is very remote, the tiny island of Ronansay off the coast of Skye, and the family is not your typical family unit,

Single mother Abby Wallace (Michelle Collins) lives in a block of flats in London. The estate is rough and she realises that it's not the best environment for her young children. She sees a classified ad in the paper which is looking for a family to move to a remote Scottish island (the locals need to bring in more children to keep the school open).

Abby ropes in her childhood friend, and neighbour, Kenny Marsh (Paul Kaye). He's always fancied her and agrees to go ahead with the plan to pretend to be a family in order to get an interview. They are obviously accepted (otherwise this would have been a very short series) and the show sees them fitting in, while trying to keep up the pretense that they are a happily married couple.

Series one works well, as does series two, but the final series falls apart pretty quickly. In fact, after I first watched the complete series, several years ago, I was sort of wishing I could scrub series three from my memory. In fact, both me and the other half thought it was truly awful... for one reason only; the way Kenny's departure was handled.

When we first watched the episodes we couldn't work out why everything had gone so wrong. The writers were clearly having a laugh, weren't they? I began to suspect that Kaye had asked to leave the show and it was a last minute change in the script. I looked online, but couldn't find any mention of why Kaye had left the show.

So, when I heard the series was being released on DVD, I was very keen to watch it again. Hopefully there would be some audio commentaries or features that shed a light on everything (there aren't in case you're wondering). We watched this box set and again really enjoyed the first two series and, while it wasn't the greatest TV we've ever seen, the third series wasn't quite as bad as we'd remembered. Kaye's departure was still a bit of a mystery though... so I took to the Internet once again to see if I could find anything.

Oddly enough, I could only find one, rather poor tabloid article, which mentioned that the official word on Kaye's departure was that he wanted to spend more time with his family. However, digging a little deeper they had discovered the onset relationship between Kaye and Collins was not too rosy. While there hadn't been any real arguments, the two just didn't really get along. This, apparently was not helped by the fact Kaye wasn't impressed that Collins had allegedly had affairs with two crew members, both of whom were married to other people. The article also reported that the producers of the show were not happy with Kaye's decision to leave and wrote him out in such a way that he couldn't return - not that that was an issue as the show didn't return for a fourth series.

Things may have turned out differently if Kaye had not decided that he wanted to leave. The writers dispense with him, just before the end of the third series, in such a pathetic way I couldn't help thinking it was done on purpose. And in one dream sequence, the locals attack Kenny for being selfish, no doubt mirroring what the actors and crew thought of Kaye abandoning them to almost certain cancellation.

The sad thing is, the show had evolved to survive without Kenny and so any future series would have worked well without him. It was more on an ensemble piece anyway, even Abby started to take more of a back seat as other character got their own storylines. So I'm wondering whether Kenny's awful departure had any bearing on the show's doom.

The DVD release sees all the episodes fully remastered. The only real extra is Cast Interviews (9 min, 29 sec) which looks to have been filmed while the show was still filming - it's not a new retrospective piece. For some strange reason this is placed on one of the first season discs, totally spoiling events that happen later in the show's run.

For those who fondly remember the show, this is worth buying, but if you're coming to it fresh... enjoy series one and two... and pretend that the end of series three didn't really happen.

7

Darren Rea