Who the L thinks this is comedy?
HOTELIER Jan was talking about a doorknob on Four In A Bed when she gasped: M.Ashbee of Etchingham wins £35 for that howler. Keep ’em coming to the address at the top of the page. SHAKESPEARE & Hathaway? Much ado about nothing.
COMIC Relief is almost here, but you’ve still got time to book tickets for a show or movie.
WHAT the hell has happened to our sense of humour?
New BBC sitcom Warren stinks like Rick Stein’s fish bins. It’s poorly written, under-developed and totally witless.
Yet they’re spinning lead character Warren Thompson as the new Victor Meldrew.
That’s like comparing a botched tattoo to the Mona Lisa or a mouldy meringue to a Bake Off show-stopper.
Meldrew, in David Renwick’s sublime One Foot In The Grave, was a decent man caught in life’s great downpour without a brolly.
He’d lost his job, his existence felt empty and he was plagued by endless indignities, misunderstandings and jobsworths. No wonder he was ratty.
In contrast, driving instructor Warren (Martin Clunes) is just a charmless waste of DNA. The first episode saw him fly-tipping asbestos, thieving from his next-door neighbours and treating his stepsons like serfs.
Cantankerous characters can be the bedrock of great comedy, of course – think of raging fools like Basil Fawlty or Alf Garnett.
Deluded nitwit David Brent and the envious inadequate Rigsby in Rising Damp had us in stitches too. But grumpiness and bad attitude aren’t enough.
They need to have redeeming qualities – even aggro-magnet Larry David Email me at: garry.bushell@ dailystar.co.uk or write c/o Daily Star Sunday,
10 Lower Thames Street, London
EC3R 6EN in Curb Your Enthusiasm is wellmeaning at heart.
Crucially, the script has to be funny. One Foot had inspired sight gags, surreal twists and lashings of black humour. Warren served up a lame, halfbaked clairvoyant and not a single credible character.
Meldrew’s catchphrase was an exasperated “I don’t be-lieve it”, Warren gives us “b ***** ks”, “you pr*t”, “t*t”, “t*sser” and “tight b **** rd”.
I can believe someone as self-centred and joyless as Warren Thompson can exist, but how would he get through life without getting chinned? He’d have to borrow a Knight Fight suit just to survive a day unscathed.
Why would anyone book a second driving lesson? And why would his dippy wife stay with him?
John Cleese and Connie Booth polished their Fawlty Towers scripts until they were faultless. Not a word was wasted.
Warren feels like a first draft which not one of the overpaid berks attached to the production, either at the Beeb or at Hat Trick Productions, felt the need to send back for a re-write. SUSANNAH Fielding, This Time...Miracle (SkyAt)...Olivia Chenery, right, Endeavour...JK Simmons, Counterpoint (AmPrime). WARREN – War & Peace was funnier... David Potts, Celebs Go Dating – the absolute pits...Traitors – laters...The Junk Food Experiment, left – super sighs, me. BRITBOX – a chance to pay to watch stuff we have already paid for… great. Dan Wootton on Lorraine – how can a grown man get so excited about trivia? The sheer unjustified length of Dancing On Ice – pumped up like a supermarket chicken. REASONS to be cheerful: Game Of Thrones is back on April 14, Line Of Duty returns in late spring, new Peaky Blinders (inset) is due soon and Killing Eve starts again on April 7.
Season two of American Gods hits AmPrime this month. A Sopranos prequel movie, The Many Saints Of Newark, is in the pipeline.
There’s a new run of Star Trek: TNG coming.
Marvellous Morven Christie plays a family liaison cop with a compromised private life in The Bay (imminent). And Bergerac is being revived – which should at least do wonders for Jersey tourism.
‘I’ve pulled Rory’s knob off!’