James Corden has certainly had a rollercoaster of a career in recent years. He has gone from award-winning hero in Gavin & Stacey to zero in his sketch show with Mathew Horne and then back to award-winning hero again with his acclaimed stage performance in One Man Two Guvnors in London and on Broadway. By the law of averages he should be due for another flop. But it doesn't look like backlash number two is going to happen with six-part comedy thriller The Wrong Mans, which he co-created and co-stars in. Judging by the first episode, it is destined to be a much talked about hit.
Corden and Mathew Baynton (the boyishly handsome one from Horrible Histories) play Phil and Sam, two lowly Berkshire Council employees whose lives are suddenly turned upside down when Sam finds a mobile phone and receives some menacing messages intended for the owner. He tells Phil, who decides that this is the chance for them to escape from their tedious suburban dreariness and have a once-in-a-lifetime adventure. And by the end of episode one it could well be once in a lifetime because their lives look in danger of being over.
The creators have namechecked The Coen Brothers in interviews and cite their movie Burn After Reading as an influence, but to me there's an element of Hitchcock too. He did, after all, make a film called The Wrong Man and liked to put ordinary people in extraordinary situations. The plot here is a beautifully balanced mixture of Hitchcockian suspense and slapstick, knockabout farce. Baynton puts on his best dumb, innocent expression while Corden muscles in and steals the show as always. There are moments when he is a little too like David Brent and a moment when he makes a speech in a hospital which sounds remarkably like the Sports Relief speech Corden made to the England football team a few years ago. Yet there is something about Corden that the camera loves. You just want to keep watching him.
And it also helps that the plot moves so fast. One minute there is a spectacular car crash on a snowy, deserted road, then after a little bit of essential exposition and Office-style desk-based japes, one is thrown straight into a plot that involves gangsters, guns and Sam nearly getting separated from one of his legs. There are twist and turns and plenty of surprises as well as laughs so that when the episode ends with a jolt you can't wait for the next one to find out what happens next.
Oh, and the supporting cast is pretty good too. The wonderful Sarah Solemani - who is on the cusp of being a bit ubiquitous at the moment – plays Sam's ex-girlfriend and Tom Basden plays one of Sam's colleagues. Dan Renton Skinner crops up too, though you may not recognise him as he is not in the gormless guise of Angelos Epithemiou. And various older comedy luminaries including Dawn French as Corden's mum and Rebecca Front will be cropping up over the next six weeks. One for the diary, the iPlayer, or both.
