Caroline Aherne

You wouldn't guess that The Security Man (ITV) was written by Caroline Aherne (along with Jeff Pope). It has neither the acerbic wit of Mrs Merton, nor the look-in-the-mirror recognition and realism of The Royle Family. Instead, it's a jolly caper. Three security men are caught (literally) off-guard when they abandon their posts to watch the Amir Khan fight, and the jewellers in the mall they're supposed to be guarding is robbed. With the help of a techie nephew and some very amateur dramatics, they mock up CCTV footage of them being a bit more heroic. It's silly, and rather nice, in a comforting, old-fashioned kind of way. I enjoyed the synchronised-mobility-scooter-to-music routines. Is that really Bobby Ball (as in Cannon and ...)? It is.

The Security Men, ITV1 - review

Puerile, predictable one-off comedy from writers Caroline Aherne and Jeff Pope.

The Security Men, ITV, review

The Security Men, a one-off comedy written by Caroline Aherne and starring Bobby Ball and Brendan O'Carroll, was unfunny and full of rancid sexism.

The Security Men attracts 4.8m to ITV

Caroline Aherne's The Security Men brought 4.82m viewers (20.1%) to ITV on Friday, overnight data shows.

One-off comedy by Caroline Aherne and Jeff Pope about four lazy security guards who fail to thwart a jewellery robbery at their shopping centre because they are watching a boxing match on TV, and are forced to conceive a scheme to save their jobs. Bobby Ball and Mrs Brown's Boys star Brendan O'Carroll are two of the guards, and the copper sent to investigate the heist is Paddy McGuinness. If you're still reading this you're either really looking forward to it or unable to turn the page because of the ennui.

Who wouldn't enjoy having the run of an empty shopping centre? But in this one-off comedy drama, co-written by Caroline Aherne (The Royle Family) and Jeff Pope (Mrs Biggs), a quartet of night security guards take things a little too far.

Having become used to using their workplace as one big playground, the team decides to adjust the security system to allow them to watch a boxing match in glorious HD.

After all, what's the worst that could happen? Brendan O'Carroll (the Irish comedian beneath the copious cardies of Mrs Brown's Boys), Peter Wight (The Paradise), Dean Andrews (Last Tango In Halifax) and Bobby Ball (without his Cannon) are the guards taking the mick.

Since the all-conquering success of The Royle Family, Caroline Aherne has been almost invisible, the great disappearing woman of British comedy. Security Men is a one-off collaboration with Jeff Pope, who also co-wrote her last project, 2009's The Fattest Man in the World.

So expectations will be high for this, a boysy, old-fashioned comedy about work-shy nightwatchmen at a shopping centre, where an attempt to catch a late-night boxing match in the centre's electrical shop backfires horribly. The star is Peter Wight as Kenneth, the mall's jobsworth head of security, obsessed with detail and routine, while his colleagues (played by Dean Andrews, Brendan O'Carroll and - gulp - Bobby Ball) mock him behind his back.

Pitched into the comedic no-man's land that separates the kid-friendly spills of Night at the Museum from the fogey-ish, knowing humour of Phoenix Nights, Caroline Aherne and Jeff Pope's one-off security guard sitcom is an absolute shambles from start to finish.

Bobby Ball and Brendan 'Mrs Brown's Boys' O'Carroll cast their star-wattage over a tale of four slack-arsed shopping-centre security bumblers who, after getting caught napping on the job, decide to rewind the CCTV tapes and recreate a daring jewel theft to make themselves look like have-a-go heroes. If the plot is rickety, the dialogue should rightly be condemned. The rootsy, conversationalist northern humour that made Aherne's The Royle Family so bizarrely sublime has entirely deserted her here. In its place are a barrage of unwarranted F-bombs and endless, charmless references to the range and variety of Ball's wife's vaginal piercings.

The odd moment of seemingly unintentional Lynch-ian weirdness occasionally snags your attention - such as the foursome watching an Amir Khan fight on the TV while the soundtrack swells to the strains of Strangers in the Night and Ball moonwalks across the floor of Dixons - but otherwise, it's a lazy, messy hour of Chuckle Brother pratfalling and needless swears.

This one-off comedy written by Caroline Aherne and Jeff Pope (who also wrote The Fattest Man In Britain together) was filmed way back in 2011. But, although anything that bears Aherne's name is usually worth seeking out, this isn't going to set the world alight.

In fact, one of the main reasons for tuning in is to see Brendan O'Carroll in uniform instead of the Mrs Brown drag that has made him a superstar.

The show also stars Peter Wight, Dean Andrews and Bobby Ball as his fellow security guards in a Salford shopping mall.

Gentle, old-fashioned and predictable, Take Me Out presenter Paddy McGuinness also pops up as a copper after the slack security men have to cope with an actual robbery.

Royle Family creator Caroline Aherne teams up with Mrs Biggs writer Jeff Pope for this very entertaining comedy about security guards working the night shift in a shut-up shopping centre. Astute casting puts Mrs Brown's Boys star Brendan O'Carroll alongside Bobby Ball, Dean Andrews and Peter Wight as the brainless foursome whose work-shy ways get them into serious bother. It is decidedly crude in parts but there are small moments of brilliance too, thanks to the writing and rare cast chemistry. Supposedly a one-off, it's easy to see this returning as a regular sitcom.