TV
How kind of the BBC to save the sitcom pilot with the most potential until last. They probably realised that something written by Sharon Horgan and Graham Linehan* alongside - and no disrespect meant to them at all - Helen Linehan and Holly Walsh would be a tough half hour to follow. And sure enough Motherland hits the sitcom motherlode.
In some ways this is the most interesting of the current Landmark Sitcom Season reboots, in some ways it is the least interesting. Original writer of Keeping Up Appearances Roy Clarke has come up with a prequel following the fortunes of the young Hyacinth to show how the future Hyacinth Bucket was shaped.
Is it possible for a sitcom to be terrible and very funny at the same time? That’s the feat that this one-off revival of Goodnight Sweetheart as part of the Landmark Sitcom Season seems to have pulled off. This time travel comedy always was an odd idea and the internal logic problems of the original run, which ended 17 years ago, still haven’t been resolved. On the other hand there are plenty of laughs.
If I was commissioning a chat show I’m not sure if I’d have picked John Bishop as host. He’s a great talker and a great teller of stories but is he a great listener? Michael McIntyre has already had a crack at the talk show format and that wasn’t a great success, so can Bishop do any better?
For this new version of Porridge the original writers, Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, are back on board which should be a good sign. The difference is that the original set-up has been updated. Fletch played by Kevin Bishop is now Nigel Norman Fletcher, the grandson on Ronnie Barker’s Norman Stanley Fletcher.
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