Gimme Gimme Gimme

- Season 2

(2000)

On the New Year's Eve of the new century, Linda is at a glitzy party and Tom is holding hands with heartthrob Simon Shepherd - and then they wake up to find themselves spending the evening in the flat with each other. Tom's guests seem to have gotten lost and he and Linda end up playing Charades...and kissing each other out of desperation. By the time the party starts they've both fallen asleep.

Tom decides to give acting lessons. His first pupil is Linda's sister Sugar, who's preparing for a play. He takes her to see 'Macbeth,' where he gets decked by Patsy Palmer. Meanwhile Linda is looking after Petula, a doll Suze and Jez have bought to practice for parenthood...and becomes so attached to it that she refuses to return it.

Linda and Tom are shocked to find an open coffin in the building containing the corpse of landlady Beryl. They are visited by a jocular undertaker and then by Beryl's handsome young Spanish toy-boy Pedro. Planning to exploit his grief to bed him, Linda and Tom are interrupted by...Beryl. Suze thinks it's thoughtful of Beryl to show up for her own funeral, but actually..

Tom purchases a cat which he hopes will make him lots of money - about £5000 a week; Linda has been visiting her prison pen pal, "Freddie Windrush," and he escapes to see her and they plan to go to Spain together. Linda tells Tom that Freddie is her long-lost German cousin Fritz, which he believes....and Tom and "Fritz" end up sleeping together. It looks like Fritz will be going to Spain with Tom instead...unless someone recognizes Freddie and calls the police.

When Tom hits The Big 3-0, his parents show up to say Happy Birthday....and to unintentionally aggravate him. They tell him they're staying in a caravan and using his bathroom; displeased, he asks Linda to come on to his father to scare him off. But it backfires..

After a night out Tom wakes up with Neville, an irritating security guard he throws out, while a horrified Linda finds she has gone to bed with Maddie, a lesbian who praises her sexual technique. She tries to prove she's straight by accosting a man in the bar where Neville works, then by taking on one of dominatrix Beryl's clients.

When Tom lands a job in the World of Sofa series of adverts, he attracting the attention of conceited actor Rick Cheesecloth, with whom he starts a relationship despite Rick's animosity to Linda, though it ends when Rick goes back into the closet. Linda falls for Ron, an attractive co-worker on the mashed-potato assembly line but loses him to plain colleague Daisy. She and Tom end up advising each other on picking up, given their lack of success with men.