Comedy Playhouse: Static
From Steptoe and Son via Sorry! and onwards, the man-child stuck at home with his parent(s) has been a staple of British sitcoms for years. Stand-up and Mock the Week regular Rob Beckett repurposes the sub-genre for this comedy pilot, written with sitcom veteran Shaun Pye, in which Rob, Beckett’s character, quits his job in London to move back in with his mother and father (Alison Steadman and Phil Davis) who, unbeknown to him, have just sold their house and moved to a static caravan in Margate.
Davis and Steadman are watchable as always, although their characters are broad caricatures, and Craig Parkinson does good work with another familiar archetype as the caravan park’s deluded, egotistical entertainment host. Beckett is a better comic than he is an actor, but there’s a warmth to the writing that compensates for the absence of big laughs. That said, it’s performed with gusto right through to Steadman and Davis’s Motown song-and-dance finale. The hit rate of the revived Comedy Playhouse has been patchy, to say the least, and Static is a workmanlike effort propped up by a fine cast; with another draft or two of the script, there might be a series in here somewhere. Gabriel Tate resurrection of his turn-ofthe-millennium smash continues with Jenny (Fay Ripley) gaining some newfound authority – which seems to go to her head. Meanwhile, an unguarded comment from Adam (James Nesbitt) could have serious implications.