A warm welcome back to Merchant’s repeat offenders
There is definitely such a thing as difficult second album syndrome in TV drama. After scoring a hit, the tricky obligation to repeat it too often produces misfires. So it’s understandable to fret about quality control as The Outlaws (BBC One) returns a mere eight months on.
The boisterous brainwave of Stephen Merchant, the first series assembled a motley crew of not-very-ne’er-do-wells who, on community service in Bristol, somehow contrived to thwart a drug gang and trouser their cash. The denouement may have left a few ends loose, but the story concluded with a satisfying smack. It turns out this was only a mid-season climax, and another six hours were shot at the same time.
In a slightly sluggish (re-)opening episode, there was a throat-clearing air of a first day back at school as we re-made everyone’s acquaintance – from resourceful sixth-form nerd Rani (Rhianne Barreto) to cranky Batman villain manqué Frank (Christopher Walken) via Merchant’s burbling, bug-eyed idiot-savant solicitor Greg. Such were the complexities of the original plot that a longer recap at the top of the show, or possibly a refresher course on iplayer, would have been handy before the gang re-entered the criminal underworld, this time to reimburse the stolen money or else.
The community service element of the story, having served its purpose, has been all but dumped. The gang still wield brooms in hi-vis gilets but their place of work is now mainly where they meet to plan and entertainingly bicker about their accidental new vocation supplying Bristol with class A drugs.
In another high-energy platespinning plot, directed with verve by Merchant and Alicia Macdonald, it’s the beautifully drawn characters who give it heart. You even care for sad sack John (Darren Boyd) when, floundering in an excruciating job interview, he delivers a pitiful aria about white privilege.
Merchant and co-writer Elgin James keep the script richly stocked with sizzling gags, some joyously silly, others marinaded in world-weary cynicism. When entitled ditz Lady Gabby (Eleanor Tomlinson) plummets down the influencers’ squash ladder, Greg counsels that nowadays “you’ve got to show empathy and cellulite”.
The other joy is a goodly supply of premium-grade smut, much of it focusing on groins. Handing over his SUV, drug dealer Christian (Gamba Cole) sternly urges Malaki (Charles Babalola) to “look after my Range like she was a nutsack”. Merchant and co have taken similar care with this delightful crown jewel.
The BBC celebrates its hundredth year in 2022, and it feels as if Top Gear (BBC One) has been around for at least 250 of them. When the sedan chair, the stage coach, the penny farthing and the very first internal combustion engine needed a roadtest review, you just know there were three joshing blokes there trading frat-house bantz and mugging like billio for the easel or the daguerreotype.
“WOOAAAHHH!” they will have hollered as one or another faceplanted into a pond or off a cliff. “DID YOU SEE THAT OR WHAT?!? MATE!” Perhaps Ye Stig attended in a topper. And a gurning claque mustered in the round to huzzah their scripted repartee.
Anyway, it is back. I won’t claim to be a lapsed devotee but long after the departure of what Fleetwood Mac scholars might term the classic line-up, there now seems to be a charisma void at the heart of the brand.
This is not to denigrate Freddie (né Andrew) Flintoff, whose documentaries on depression and bulimia unveiled someone comfortable with quiet vulnerability. But he’s been competently migrating around the noisy formats for years now and there’s little sense that his heart is in cars. At the other end of the track is Chris Harris who can achieve high speeds but is no performer. Completing the current trinity is Paddy Mcguinness, essentially a foghorn with a driving licence.
This week, they were in Florida to compete in some wacky races.
Do I have to tell you about the cars? I don’t think I do. Nor the alligators. They got about in a gas-guzzling motorhome. A dash-mounted camera captured every Socratic hilarity. They got stuck in mud. Then Harris sprained his ankle and completed the show on crutches. It’s as if Top Gear can’t help meta-critiquing itself.
It’s genuinely awful, isn’t it? Alas there’s no way of enhancing what used to be a magazine show about cars – by including women, say, or taking a responsible attitude to global warming – without fatally hybridising whatever it is that secures its mystifying popularity. Maybe they could all go off and farm. Apparently that works.
The Outlaws ★★★★ Top Gear ★