This article was originally published in The Courier on 16th August 2014.
Boomers:
Friday, BBC One
Almost
Royal: Sunday, E4
Paul
Whitelaw
I magnanimously welcome the idea of a
sitcom aimed at older viewers, but I'd prefer a funnier example than
the lacklustre Boomers. Set in a quiet seaside town inhabited
by pensionable baby boomers, it contains nary an original bone in its
body.
The setting for this first episode
was a funeral, which in more capable hands can be a fecund source of
black comedy and pathos. Unfortunately, such pleasures are beyond the
reach of writer Richard Pinto, whose most notable credit to date is
the bland Citizen Khan.
I can't argue with the quality of
Boomers' all-star cast – including Alison Steadman,
Stephanie Beacham, Russ Abbot and Phil Jackson – but I can easily
take issue with Pinto's second-hand script. Unforgivably light on
gags, whenever it does attempt a funny line, e.g. Paula Wilcox saying
of the deceased, “Most of my memories of Jean are mainly power
walking-based,” they come across as self-consciously sculpted and
clumsy.
Pinto also made the schoolboy error
of building up a character before he arrived on screen, with
inevitably anticlimactic results. That character is Mick, an ageing
lothario played by Nigel Planer who was the subject of every
conversation within the first ten minutes. The subtext was: wait 'til
you get a load of this guy, viewers. Someone even described him as “a
real character”.
Of course, when Mick finally arrived
he was a mid-life crisis stereotype with – God help us from this
knackered cliché – a much younger eastern European wife. Does
Pinto really think this is an original, funny character? Even the
dire Little Britain based some sketches around an older
British man with a mail order bride, and that was nearly ten years
ago.
Still, at least Mick's wife gave the
ever-reliable James Smith, alias Glenn from The Thick of It, a
chance to perform his repressed bumbler shtick. It was the only
mildly amusing highlight.
The problem with Boomers is
it's gentle to a fault. Low-key character pieces of this kind require
the wit and observational depth of an Alan Bennett or Victoria Wood.
Pinto has all the right pieces in place, but he lacks the inspiration
to crank them into life.
The cast are as solid as you'd
expect, but they provide the only hint of sparkle on an otherwise
dull and unremarkable trinket.
Funnier by far is Almost Royal,
a Borat-style comedy in which comedians Ed Gamble and Amy Hoggart
pose as aristocratic British siblings on a mission to bamboozle
America. But whereas Sacha Baron Cohen was partially concerned with
exposing the prejudices of those he encountered, there's no real
point being made here. Free of malice, it's simply an excuse for a
welter of daft gags delivered by two nimble comic actors.
While it gently exploits America's
love of all things British, no one is made to look foolish. The
pleasure comes from watching real people indulge the sublimely naïve
Georgie and Poppy Carlton with a mixture of confused politeness and
amusement.
The admirably straight-faced Gamble
and Hoggart never miss a chance to misunderstand or question their
patient hosts. I particularly liked Georgie innocently asking a car
dealer, “Where does this car go?” and later, while observing
production on daytime soap The Bold and The Beautiful, saying
to one of its stars, “Is this set in a different world?”.
It's a neat, breezy twist on the
innocents abroad formula.
