Horrible, horrible, horrible title. What was going on in writer Tom Edge’s mind when he thought that one up? He must have been very pleased with himself. He must have had a right old giggle behind the bikesheds and taken the rest of the day off. Job done. Give him a great big clap.
Actually this new sitcom is nowhere near as bad as the title, but that doesn't make it any good. It would have to be truly atrocious to plumb those depths. Johnny Flynn plays Dylan, a hapless but hopelessly cool twentysomething who discovers that he has chlamydia and, as you’ll have no doubt seen in the trailers by now, has to tell his past sexual partners.
The first episode is a flashback to a grand Four Weddings-style country house wedding that Johnny attended with a woman he had barely met. They split up before the first ad break so there’s a bit of a fun guessing game working out who he is going to end up in bed with. Not much fun, admittedly.
Meanwhile Johnny’s bezza mate Luke (Daniel Ings) is trying to get into the knickers of every woman with a pulse and Johnny’s female friend Evie (Antonia Thomas) annoys the bride, who is a bit of a bridezilla in the mould of Laura from Him & Her.
Scrotal Recall looks pretty filmic thanks to some nice locations. It certainly doesn’t feel much like a conventional studio sitcom. Nor does it have the kind of laughs you’d get in a broad sitcom. It’s more like a Richard Curtis film with added STD. Almost everyone is sexy, young and pretty, you hardly see anyone over forty and if you walked into the room at the wrong moment you’d probably think you were watching an attempt at a hipster ad for a bank, not a sitcom.
Johnny Flynn is the best thing about this. He’s got bags of charisma and at certain angles looks like a chubby-cheeked Noel Fielding. But not even that is going to win me over. They say when you have a sexually transmitted disease it feels like pissing razor blades. In that sense Scrotal Recall has succeeded. Watching this also feels a lot like pissing razor blades.
Scrotal Recall is on C4, Thursdays at 10pm.
