Bruce Mackinnon

We Are Not Alone review

The latest fab comedy from the team behind Ghosts makes alien invasion look... fun?

TV review: Episodes, BBC2

It happens to be quite funny. Not that comedies have to be very funny these days...

Episodes, series five, episode one review

The perfect encapsulation of cruel yet effective comedy.

When I was a child, wintry Sunday evenings meant watching Last of the Summer Wine while eating my supper, snuggled up to the radiator. It wasn't so much the thrill-a-minute antics that held me in thrall as the gentle rhythms of Peter Sallis's voice, later employed to such wonderful effect by Aardman. "More cheese, Gromit?" Certainly, but if you don't mind, I'll stick to the Stinking Bishop rather than the terrible stench wafting over from Big Top.

One can only imagine that the BBC commissioners are hoping to recreate the feeling of warmth engendered by Cleggy, Compo and Foggy with this throwback of a comedy, and the cheese gauge is certainly set on full fat - but the gags are never more than inanely mild.

To judge by her hotpants and hunting jacket, Amanda Holden must be the ringmistress of a circus whose acts we never see but which sounds, from behind the scenes, where the action takes place, frankly, rubbish, despite an all-star cast. The Thompson twins, Sophie (of EastEnders, and, erm, sister of Emma fame) and John (Cold Feet and Coronation Street, though admittedly a Thomson without the "p") are married circus clowns - Helen and Geoff - who, we are constantly told by Erasmus (Tony Robinson, in an odd-job role I could never quite put my finger on), would bring more joy to the assembled crowds by leaving the ring rather than finishing their act. Ruth "Hi-De-Hi!" Madoc finally drains any goodwill her campers might still hold for her as a demanding grande dame who can't keep her dancing dogs on a leash; and Bruce Mackinnon harks back to the benign world of Alf Garnett as the idiotic acrobat Boyco, from Eastern Europe. (Thank you for the geographic tip, BBC press release.) Bruce who? Oh, come now, Bruce Mackinnon... you know, that one from The Office and The Catherine Tate Show. Still no? Me neither.

Sorry, did I say benign world? I meant disturbingly racist world. Eastern European, is he? He'll probably have a funny accent. Oh, he does. And he's casually homophobic in a nonsensical way? ("That homosexual pop group ... Coldplay.") Of course he is. But that's OK. Because he's Eastern European. Any particular country? Apparently not. But then, as stupid and offensive as Boyco's character is, it's no worse than the rest of this trite bunch. Did you not know that everyone who works in a circus is dim?

One could dwell on the curiosity of Holden's Botoxed face not allowing her a full range of gurning (or, indeed, any expression at all); on a paucity of imagination (one of Madoc's dogs is called Fido. Fido, for goodness' sake); on the offensive and pathetic punchlines (Geoff: "When we come in, you're supposed to play Looney Tunes, not ..." Erasmus: "... Hitler's speech to the 1935 Nuremberg Rally." Do we really need the date as detail - in case we thought it was a different rally? Is that speech even comedy fodder?); on the repeated attempts to get a laugh from a story straight out of a Victorian music hall about sticking ferrets down trousers ("Looks like they had a ball." Ho ho!). But to go on like that would be cruel.