John Cleese, Alison Steadman, Jason Watkins, James Cosmo, Rosie Cavaliero, Joanna Scanlon, Peter Egan and Anne Reid - all versatile and outstanding actors and personal favourites of mine, but it just doesn't gel. It should be a treat, instead with each episode I feel it hasn't even begun to get under way. Two bits only I find funny and draw me in - Cleese and Egan's interchange, and Anne Reid's mischievous manipulation, while Jason Watkins antics make me cringe and despair for the poor actor playing such an awful and relentless role.
And it won a second series, even worse than the first, so far. More dramatic. More bickering over sillier plots played out and flogged to extinction.
Two negatives in its favour - it lacks the substitute for humour so often offered by gratuitous and boring bad language, and there is no studio audience cackling away. But maybe they didn't çackle.
I'll watch every episode, in hope it may find what it lacks - or to prove I'm right that it is a hopeless case. And there's very little else on iPlayer comedy.
And it won a second series, even worse than the first, so far. More dramatic. More bickering over sillier plots played out and flogged to extinction.
Two negatives in its favour - it lacks the substitute for humour so often offered by gratuitous and boring bad language, and there is no studio audience cackling away. But maybe they didn't çackle.
I'll watch every episode, in hope it may find what it lacks - or to prove I'm right that it is a hopeless case. And there's very little else on iPlayer comedy.