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As the Jerome Kern-Dorothy Fields standard goes, this is A Fine Romance, a smart and low-key 1981 British series starring Oscar-winning Judi Dench and her real-life husband, Michael Williams, as a mismatched couple. This three-volume boxed set contains the first nine episodes, in which a comedy of errors keeps linguist Laura (currently translating a German textbook on urinary infections) and struggling landscape gardener Michael from hooking up romantically. It is, to again quote the song, a fine romance with no kisses (at least not until episode 6). Like Glenda Jackson, Dench excels at portraying prickly women of fierce intelligence who possess a quick wit and a sharp tongue, and who do not suffer fools. "I don't have any small talk," she complains to her matchmaking sister at a party. "Or any medium talk." Williams has a rumpled Dudley Moore quality as sad-sack Michael, "the odd single chap for the odd single girl." He is, as one character notes, "second division": quiet, nervous, short, and shy. His desperate attempts to find common ground with Laura--witness their ill-fated excursion to an ethnic mask museum exhibit in episode 2--make up much of the humor of these initial episodes. As one observer notes, "I like you two; you're odd." It is a pleasure to watch Laura and Michael's "mutual apathy" blossom into, well, you know the song. --Donald Liebenson
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