Ben Elton

The Wright Way savaged on Twitter

Twitter really cracked knuckles and got its collective snark on last night to appraise Ben Elton's new sitcom The Wright Way.

If he hadn't actually written this himself, you'd have assumed some sort of Ben Elton sitcom generator had done the job for him. A short-fused health-and-safety manager (David Haig) with a gay daughter, and her live-in girlfriend, tries to get to grips with modern life: whether wrestling with taps or buying a birthday gift for a female co-worker. As mirthless as it is dated (pratfalls, innuendo, jokes about PC-ness), it's comparable to Extras' When The Whistle Blows, with a regrettably similar catchphrase: "Do not get me started."

Ben Elton's first sitcom in over a decade feels old and new at the same time. The first joke is about how long women spend in the bathroom, and you groan inwardly. Then it turns out the man making the joke - our uptight antihero, played by David Haig - shares a house with his daughter and her girlfriend. "What is the point of being a lesbian if you continue to act like a normal woman?" he demands.

The tone is old-school. Haig, whose character, Gerald Wright, rants about everything, does exasperation well (and a lot). Oddly his character is the thing middle-aged curmudgeons hate most - a health and safety officer.

Maybe it's too easy to knock Ben Elton these days but God, this is diabolical. Making The Thin Blue Line and Blessed look like comic masterpieces by comparison, Elton's latest foray into sitcom stars David Haig (doing his level best against impossible odds) as Baselricky council's health-and-safety manager, Gerald Wright. Default mode: exasperation. Bugbears: women in bathrooms, poor dishwasher etiquette, faulty faucets. Catchphrase: 'don't get me started'. You know the type.

Fortunately, there's a clap-happy studio audience to disguise the absence of a single good joke - wordplay around 'erection' and 'knob' is about as creative as it gets. And, in case you think all that sounds hopelessly out of step with the modern world, the girlfriend of Gerald's lesbian daughter drops a couple of references to hashtags and 'YouTube moments'. Never have Blackadder and The Young Ones seemed so long ago. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

What happened to Ben Elton?

Who would believe this is the same comic whose stand-up routines sandblasted away the pebbledash of 1970s tit-gags and racism?

Ben Elton's The Wright Way - What went wrong?

It is easy to knock Ben Elton because of his involvement in We Will Rock You, but that does not explain quite how bad The Wright Way is.

I wonder if Ben Elton saw a Channel 4 Comedy Showcase pilot called Fun Police a couple of years ago about an ­overzealous health and safety department at a local council. I only ask because his new sitcom stars David Haig as overzealous health and safety officer Gerald Wright.

Gerald's gripes about modern life sound suspiciously like one of Ben Elton's old stand-up routines, only done in a comedy voice.

And almost everyone in this has a comedy voice, except for Beattie Edmondson, who has two. She plays Gerald's daughter's lesbian girlfriend - a modern flourish in a show as old-fashioned as one of Elton's spangly suits.

You can feel the heavy hand of ex-My Family director Dewi Humphreys all over this, while the laughter track suggests an ­audience rupturing their spleens over gags that are smirk-worthy at best. But Mina Anwar who plays Malika is rather good - perhaps because she's the only one speaking normally.

The sitcom that proves Ben Elton is no longer funny

How is it possible this dire new comedy was written by the same person behind Blackadder and The Young Ones?

Once the enfant terrible of British comedy, Ben Elton has diverted his considerable energy in recent years to writing brash satirical fiction and money-spinning musicals. He hasn't touched television in any major way since 2005 with his short-lived sitcom Blessed, an ill-advised riff on parenting. Now he's back, braving the genre with this six-part series based around the goings on at fictional Baselricky Council Health & Safety Department. It's a hit-and-miss affair. On the one hand, you get to spend time with the superlative David Haig who stars as pernickety department head Gerald Wright, six months post-break-up from his wife and living with daughter Susan (Joanne Matthews) and her ditzy partner Victoria (Beattie Edmondson).

High-octane Haig rules the screen with an admirably dextrous performance reminiscent of Elton himself in its attack and precision. The council setting also has potential, giving Elton the chance to challenge the bureaucracy of small-minded local government - tonight's episode tackles red tape around a rogue speed bump. But despite old-fashioned sitcom aspirations, it's tame stuff compared to Elton's politically charged persona of old, and the laughs are too few.

It is with relief that I can report that Ben Elton's new comeback series is hilarious! It is a classic situation comedy with great jokes and ... and funny characters who ... who ...

No. I'm sorry, it's no good. You see, it really is no good; in fact, it's a stinker. David Haig plays Gerald Wright (hence the title!), an annoying man who wants everything done a certain way. It's a perennial sitcom trope, done beautifully by Richard Briers in Ever Decreasing Circles, for instance, or 
decently by Chris Barrie in The Brittas Empire. He's a health and safety inspector for a local council, the department "that introduced the static seesaw and the horizontal slide [and said] babies must wear helmets when breastfeeding near the swings".

But what makes it a stinker are the jokes, which feel as though when the BBC moved out of Television Centre they found an old box at the back of the cupboard labelled "Leftover Sitcom Gags 1973". They are ancient, is what I'm saying, they have whiskers on them.

The main running joke involves Wright trying to wash his hands under a bathroom tap and soaking his trousers, and then someone coming in and thinking he's wet himself, and then shoogling about under a hand dryer and someone else coming in and thinking he's doing something filthy. And this happens three times.

Haig tries to make things sound funny by stretching and emphasising certain words - not a stammer, but a sort of word-mastication which would be excellent for someone trying to practice shorthand or audio typing dictation, if anyone still does that nowadays.

The show's token nod to modernity is that Wright lives with his daughter and her female partner (played by Beattie Edmondson, daughter of Elton's old chum Adrian - how cosy). He has to buy a present and they suggest a shop called Girl Shack - wait, Girl Shack? In 2013? I take it Chic Chicks or Trendy Togs or Burdz Boutique were all taken?

Finally, there is the catchphrase: "Don't get me started!" which Wright says when particularly exasperated. This is very nearly "Are you 'avin' a laugh?" from Ricky Gervais' spoof sitcom When The Whistle Blows. Sorry, Ben: this isn't 
the one that's going to win over your critics.