David Jason

David Jason's 'The Royal Bodyguard' dips to 4.5m

David Jason sitcom The Royal Bodyguard suffered a dip in the ratings week-on-week, overnight figures indicate.

The Royal Bodyguard... oh dear. No laughs. With all due respect, national treasure Sir David Jason is simply too old to play ­Buckingham Palace's answer to Inspector Clouseau.

A bumper Boxing Day for BBC1 as eight ­million loyal fans tuned into the great man's first comedy role since Del Boy. But to call this ­swirling mass of ­outdated clichés ­"comedy" was a bit of a stretch. Expect reduced ­ratings for tomorrow's feeble instalment.

Sir David was never famous for physical slapstick. Why try ­playing the clown at the age of 71? He looked like a pensioner in pain.

The alleged humour revolved around ­accidental hero Guy Hubble's undeserved elevation to protecting the Queen. To the ­exasperation of ­everyone except Her Majesty. Hee hee... he's ­hanging from the ­balcony in his ­underpants. Ho ho... he's ­karate chopping an empty suit of armour. Ha ha... he's making a mess of eating a ­lobster. Oh God.

A younger more ­athletic actor might have made it ­slightly funnier. But with such dire material, what would be the point?

There's a tacit assumption swirling around the Christmas schedules that people's critical faculties will somehow be suspended at this time of year. In other words, they can be palmed off with any old tripe. Possibly there's something in this, but there are limits and The Royal Bodyguard exceeded every one of them.

This is a new sitcom starring David Jason as an accident-prone royal bodyguard, which on my seasonal ho-ho meter at least scored absolutely no hos at all.

As if in tacit acknowledgement of its lack of originality, Jason kept doing that little sideways jink of his neck that he used to do as Del Boy.
Every joke came signposted from about 10 miles away. When Jason lent against a grand piano, you could bet your last dollar on the certainty that the lid was going to come crashing down - and sure enough it did. And when he tried to eat a lobster - with a knife and fork, I'm afraid - there was a dreadful inevitability about his drinking the contents of the finger bowl.

Sir David's right royal carve-up

They say timing is everything in comedy. So let's call it a badly timed twist of fate that in the very week Stephen Fry called him 'one of the finest comedy actors in TV history', poor old David Jason had a bit of a 'mare. I speak, of course, of BBC1's The Royal Bodyguard. And I think it's only right and respectful that after today we all agree never to speak of it again.

Tonight, David Jason's Clouseau-like royal bodyguard is charged with protecting a redheaded prince on a shopping trip, but an armed robbery at a jewellery boutique escalates the situation into a national emergency. Cue hi-jinks as Guy Hubble (Jason) makes a succession of schoolboy errors while attempting a rescue. This sitcom is a complete flight of fancy and a welcome respite from all those comedies about the frustrations of everyday life. Most of all, it's a terrific platform from which Jason can show off his peerless comic timing.

David Jason's The Royal Bodyguard slammed by fans

More than a million people turned off Sir David Jason's new sitcom The Royal Bodyguard on Boxing Day - with thousands of his fans saying it made him look like a right plonker.

David Jason's 'The Royal Bodyguard' logs 7.1m for BBC1

Sir David Jason's The Royal Bodyguard pulled in over 7 million viewers last night, according to the latest overnight data.

I realised that The Royal Bodyguard despised me about five or six minutes in. Mark Bussell and Justin Sbresni's new comedy began with a backstory prologue to introduce us to its central character, Guy Hubble, a blazered ex-military jobsworth who has a job supervising the Buckingham Palace car park.

As the Royal Household wait for the Queen to climb into the royal coach, Hubble spots a stray crisp packet on the gravel and leaps forward to spare Her Majesty this distressing sight. And then, seeing that one of the Coldstream Guards is asleep at his post, he inflates the bag and pops it in his face, with a bang like a pistol going off. The coach horses bolt, with the Sovereign dangling from the steps. Having set this disaster in motion, Hubble then puts things rights, seconds away from a crash that would have put Prince Charles on the throne. How did this idiot get a senior post as a royal bodyguard? That's how.

It's not really a complicated comic idea, this. Think Inspector Clouseau and you're halfway there. Hubble, played by David Jason with a bantam-strut of self-regard, is chaos in trousers. But just in case we're a little slow on the uptake, the writers supply an exasperated superior to underline things for us. And then he finishes his little speech with the ponderous line: "With him in that job... anything could happen." Well, thank you for the clarification, but I'd actually worked that out five minutes ago. The character's the idiot, not the viewer. What followed was, as they say, "predictably hilarious", which means not terribly hilarious at all, unless you have a thing about seeing David Jason in his underwear hanging off a balcony. Nothing wrong with a cartoon, of course, but all too often this one is crudely drawn.

Clashing with a pair of sinister Slav assassins who talked about "shaking the vurld to its core", Hubble managed to cock everything up until his final cock-up inadvertantly saved Her Majesty and he was the hero of the hour again. It contained two sight-gags that made me laugh - one when Hubble attempted to eat a lobster with a knife and fork and another when a room-service trolley concealing him began inching out of the room propelled by his fingers - but another attempt at critical charity failed. I wrote in my notes that I thought the faults lay more in the direction than the script, since if it was played a little more deadpan some of the comedy would work much better. But then the credits revealed that the writers had also produced and directed it, so I'm afraid they're just going to have to carry the can.

David Jason plays a bumbling buffoon called Guy Hubble, who becomes an accidental hero when, as Head of Security at Buckingham Palace, he rescues the Queen from her runaway carriage.

Hubble is appointed to guard his sovereign at all times. But everyone knows he's an idiot, including the high-up who appointed him (the magnificent Geoffrey Whitehead).

This new series is the most undemanding of farces, involving Jason being caught on a balcony in his underwear, hiding under tables and fighting with a suit of armour.

Both far too much and not nearly enough were being asked of David Jason in his new vehicle, a sitcom entitled The Royal Bodyguard (BBC1), in which he plays a royal bodyguard. (That is, a bodyguard to the Queen, not a member of the royal family trying his hand at gainful employment. Sorry. I thought I'd clear that up first in case you were, quite legitimately, slightly fogged after two days of feasting and merriment.)

It was a part that required much gun-in-hand rolling under beds, leaping on to horses and hiding in hostess trollies and not much in the way of droll delivery of verbal gags. Writing the part for - or giving it to - Jason was to play to all of his weaknesses and none of his strengths. Superbly comically deft and nimble, no one could claim - even before he turned 71 - that he was an athletic actor. It's all in the timing and fleeting flickers across his vividly labile face. Don't give him broad slapstick - unless it's That Fall, 30 years ago, through That Bar - it's too agonising a waste.

Beyond that, the best way to describe The Royal Bodyguard is that for those that like that sort of thing, this is the sort of thing they like. People saying "Please tell me it's not Hubble, sir" and it turning out to be Hubble. Hubble trying to eat a whole lobster with a knife and fork. A man described by his superiors as "a walking disaster" accidentally saving the Queen from an assassination attempt to their furious disbelief (you almost expected an instruction to "Press the red button if you want comedy steam graphics coming out of their ears!") and so, terribly on. The best the spirit of Christmas can lead me to say about it is no more.