I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

"Are there somewhere places...?" If you could get past the appalling (and relentlessly repeated) signature song by the deservedly obscure Meal Ticket, you'd be entering a place that truly had travelled in time. This timeslip drama unaccountably has 1980 stamped on the base. You remember 1980? Yep, it was nothing like the society depicted here, of vaguely-political, pint-glugging, chirpy Notting-Hillers. Ferchrissakes, setting it in Portobello says it all.The place was a living museum to the early '70s back then and has only recently dragged itself into the,ooh, early '90s. Dominic Hide's's naif rapidly loses his charm and his stoner persona combined with the look, attitudes and stylings of the supporting cast had me in mind of the early '70s, certainly not the hard-nosed era of Thatcher and 3 million unemployed! Truly just how irksome is Firth and how inexplicable that even 200 years hence such a hippy-dippy twerp could be charged with such an important task as travelling back in time (and potentially upsetting history). Once there he predictably starts messing around and his canoodling with Langrishe whilst happily spliced in his own time (without seemingly much in the way of moral dilemmas) might ring true when seen through the prism of those long-gone late '60s/early '70s mores (free-love, "if it feels good do it" etc) but it should have struck a dull note to a reasonably progressive 1980s audience and by 2007 seems utterly anachronistic. And this feller's from the 22nd century,remember! I'll let you into a secret here - I saw this on telly on its first repeat in the early 1980s and loved it. I was an incurable romantic back then and I guess that on rewatching it today,I was hoping to be swept back to happier times. But I found I just could not buy its sloppy idealism. To compound matters I began watching the 1982 sequel but at the point where the (male) babysitter entered the story, looking like the bloke from The Joy of Sex and with all the patchouli-scented charm of Sher's History Man, nausea overcame me and then when an even sillier time-traveller (Pyrus Bonnington) began flirting with the Spanish au-pair, Alice was duly summoned with the sick-bag. Just how has this tripe acquired the status of a classic?? Or am I simply an old curmudgeon?

I don't wish to go into great detail about this lovely piece, save to say that I loved it when it was first broadcast, and having seen it again recently, I find it no less delightful.The "time traveller becomes his own ancestor" theme is a popular one in Sci-Fi - common, even - but few re-workings of the idea have the lightness of touch and simple charm you will find here. It's a joy.To a modern viewer, a few things may seem anachronistic. In terms of sexual politics, its attitudes are a bit old-fashioned, even for 1980: both of the women in Dominick's life are essentially passive characters. Also, it suffers technically from the side-effects of low budget BBC drama production (some of the studio interior scenes have rather noticeable background noise: you can hear the cameras moving about). However, none of these factors is sufficiently serious to spoil one's enjoyment.Finally, let me add a curious personal observation: given the other main theme of the piece (a man having to cope with juggling two simultaneous sexual relationships in different eras), I can't help feeling that "The Flipside" and its sequel "Another Flip For Dominick" must have been in some respect influential on the writers of the excellent British 1990s sitcom "Goodnight Sweetheart", in which a modern day TV repair man accidentally finds a doorway to the 1940s through which he can come and go at will, and ends up having to deal with the stresses of being married to two women, fifty years apart.

Like some of the other 2006 comments I just watched this on BBC4. I had seen it when it was first shown, and again when it was shown with "Another Flip" (which will be on in a few days as I write this), but as far as I know I haven't seen it since. However, it made enough of an impression that I remembered most of the plot. I watched it with some trepidation; I was 18 in 1980 and I'm a lot more critical now than I was then.However, I found myself still drawn in. It's hard to say why exactly; the plot is not that original and is anyway fairly simple. Also it was obviously made on a shoestring, anyone expecting a Hollywood scifi blockbuster will be sadly disappointed. In the end it's just very well-written and well-acted, at least by the principles, some of the minor characters are a bit less believable. And there are lots of small touches, if you listen carefully to the dialogue and watch the background.I'm not ticking the spoiler box so I won't give the plot away, although this isn't really something for which spoilers are relevant, the pleasure is in the details. Suffice to say that it's basically a somewhat unusual love story, with a lot of humour and some science-fiction elements. As a film it would probably attract the "chick flick" label, but I'm a man and I still like it :)I've given it 8/10 only because, in the end, there isn't that much depth to it, but on its own terms it would rate 10/10.

A young man from the future arrives by flying saucer in 1980s London, and finds it an interesting experience. This is enjoyable and interesting drama, rather than mainstream science fiction.