They say all publicity is good publicity, so the makers of ITV1's Piglets must have been rubbing their hands with glee at the pre-transmission outrage over this show's title, which seemed to be a variant on an old school derogatory term for the police. Would the series, all about a group of trainees at cop college, be as offensive as the title that prompted complaints from the Police Federation of England and Wales? Hardly. Piglets is silly and surreal and a very odd sitcom for ITV1 on a Saturday night.

Mark Heap and Sarah Parrish star as the two senior officers overseeing a group of oddballs. The inspiration seems to have come more from the Police Academy movies rather than the old Rowan Atkinson sitcom The Thin Blue Line. There is no attempt at realism, everything is played at a frantic, over the top pace. It's certainly not hard-hitting gritty satire.

The trainees are what you might call a central casting mixed bunch. There's ex-dinner lady Geeta (Sukh Kaur Ojla), enthusiastic Afia (Halema Hussain), aspiring actor Dev (Abdul Sessay), Steph (Callie Cooke), whose ex-boyfriend Mike (Ukweli Roach) works at the college, Leggo (Sam Pote), who comes from a police family and dodgy Paul (Jamie Bisping), who looks like he should be locked up, not locking people up.

The first episode sets up the sketchy characters quickly, with one of the subplots involving Steph spying on her ex and scuppering any potential new relationships. There's also Rebecca Humphries pulling multiple comic faces as one of the admin team and Ricky Champ as a bullish trainer taken off normal duties for unexplained reasons: "Technically, someone died”. I particularly liked their scene about drug nicknames - did they really say the street slang for heroin was "The One Show"? 

Something niggled me about Piglets until I read that said that it was written by people involved in C4's medical comedy Green Wing (the full writing team of oldies and newbies is Victoria Pile, Robert Harley, James Henry, Oriane Messina, Fay Rusling and Omar Khan). It seems to aspire to the same kind of manic energy and appears to hope that Mark Heap will bring the same kind of bossy lunacy he brought to the dotty hospital classic. 

It has its moments, but there is something about Piglets that doesn't quite work. It certainly feels odd on ITV1 back to back with the more conventional Alan Carr vehicle Changing Ends. If there are any complaints about it though they should be that it's not funny rather than that it's offensive,

Piglets, ITV1, Saturdays and on ITVX.

Picture: ITV1