Bloody Americans, coming over here and writing our comedies. After Episodes on BBC2 and Vicious on ITV1 here is Mr Sloane, Sky Atlantic’s new comedy-drama starring Nick Frost. The writer/director is Robert B Weide. Lovers of quality comedy will recognise the name immediately. Weide worked on Curb Your Enthusiasm and made that illuminating Woody Allen documentary a couple of years ago.
Sloane is a fascinating departure because – and here it is totally unlike Episodes - it is a thoroughly English programme with a thoroughly English feel to it. It’s 1969, it’s suburbia (somewhere fictional near Watford) and Frost plays Jeremy Sloane, a suit-wearing office drone who has missed out on the swinging sixties and is so depressed he starts the programme swinging off the end of a rope.
The plot follows him as he tries to rebuild his life after the departure of his wife Janet (played in flashback by Olivia Colman) and the loss of his job to his rival Ross (Peter Serafinowicz). There are only so many nights that Sloane can stay in listening to Gilbert and Sullivan and eating entire family-sized chocolate cake and things take a turn for the romantic when he meets unashamedly gorgeous hippy chick Robyn (Ophelia Lovibond). Is Mr Sloane going to start to loosen up and swing after all? Stick around and see.
Weide's script neatly captures the tedium of office life and the banter required to keep one sane. It is particularly good on the little details. The son left sitting in the car while dad boozes in the fug-filled pub, the casual drinking and driving, the general brown-ness of everything. Give that set designer a prize. This takes place a few years earlier but it has a similar three-day week, grimy Britain look to Ricky Gervais’s Cemetery Junction. Weide, helped by co-writers Aschlin Ditta and Oliver Lansley, paints a picture of a world where the most exciting part of one’s day is a visit to the local hardware store where you almost expect Ronnie Barker to be behind the counter selling four candles to Ronnie Corbett.
Despite the superficial similarities then, this six-parter ends up being almost the polar opposite to Episodes. Where that is all about Brits pursuing their sunny dreams in contemporary Hollywood, this is Hollywood coming to England and finding the darker flipside to the sixties dream. So far anyway. Oh, and in case it wasn’t already obvious, Frost is very good at being entertaining as Mr Sloane.
Mr Sloane, Fridays, 9pm, Sky Atlantic.
