Derek Jacobi

Vicious, my type of television, is the panto-style tale of two heavily theatrical, caustic old homosexuals - Ian McKellen and Derek Jacobi - living in a dark flat, curtains drawn, loathing everyone, with occasional visits from sublime proto-hag Violet - Frances de la Tour - who turns up to add deadpan fuel to their bitching bonfire. Broad, brash and shallow this may be, but if this isn't at least a rough outline of my life in the Starlight Home for Retired Hacks circa 2057, then something has gone very awry. I rather loved British stalwart Marcia Warren as Penelope, when the ensemble sat sipping tea at a gay wake, remembering their dead friend's terrific affection for handsome men. "Wasn't there a wife?" Penelope said, scrunching her face to remember the finer details of the 1960s, "I'm sure I remember a wife?" "Ugh, 17 years," McKellen hissed with an airy wave.

Most of the opening jaunt of Vicious featured the aged couple making colossal fools of themselves by flirting with their new twenty-something neighbour. If one really wants something to get terrifically het up about, one could say the whole show glorified sexual assault and augmented gay stereotypes. I just took it for a lovely, daft, gay, romp full of acidic quips. It's too beautifully easy and temporarily satisfying to detest all new comedy on sight. I do it myself.

The opening titles roll, the first scene appears establishing characters in broad strokes. "Ugh, I hate everyone here!" the internet roars, 'I hate the fact this was even made, I hate everyone involved, in fact this shit-fest is the amalgamation of all that is wrong, safe, depressing and nepotism-fuelled about British TV commissioning." Obviously, in the case of BBC1's The Wright Way, this is not only true but an understatement, but, in most cases, it's just a show gathering momentum.

Vicious stars Ian McKellen and Derek Jacobi as a pair of gay old queens sharing their lives and a crepuscular flat that looks like a relic from a 1970s sitcom set.

That design may well be a consciously ironic reference but it didn't make the setting any more appealing. There was something dankly theatrical about it. In theory, that befits McKellen's role as an ageing rep actor who, in the show's best line, "once killed a prostitute in Coronation Street".

But there was also something dankly theatrical about the whole concept - the over-pronounced acting, the laboured dialogue, the arch gestures, McKellen's dressing gown - that felt like being trapped in a dramatic workshop on camp with two self-regarding thespians, but not nearly as amusing as that sounds.

Of course, the radical new aspect of the show is that it's a sitcom about gay men on mainstream television. While that's a development worthy of applause, it doesn't, unfortunately, command laughter. Nor did Frances de la Tour, reprising her Rising Damp role 40 years on, but this time more as a female Rigbsy than an older Miss Jones.

She found herself in the unenviable position of having to try to out-camp Jacobi and McKellen, which is rather like having to out-butch Schwarzenegger and Stallone. Everything was at a hysterical pitch, but nothing happened. Instead, the dreadfully static nature of it made you long for the energy and pace of the commercial break.

Only when I watched it for a second time did I work out the point of Vicious. Of course: it wasn't a sitcom. It was an elaborate exercise in trolling.

On first viewing I couldn't understand why, in the year 2013, two gay men - Gary Janetti and Mark Ravenhill - would create a comedy about gay men who conform to almost every homophobic stereotype: bitchy, vain, melodramatic, lecherous, rude, sulky. The programme's working title was Vicious Old Queens. It was as if Germaine Greer had created a sitcom called Dykes, about two feminists who hate men, wear dungarees and have no sense of humour.

Then it struck me. Vicious was a wind-up, its aim to enrage bilious homophobes by rubbing their faces in their own prejudices. "There! See!" the bilious homophobes would splutter.

"Homosexuals are every bit as seedy and unpleasant as I thought! God, they make me so angry, I could... Arrrgh! My chest! Call 999! I'm having a heart attack!"

I suppose there is an alternative possibility, namely that Vicious is just a load of hackneyed old rubbish. But I'm sure that can't be it.

Vicious stars Ian McKellen and Derek Jacobi (quite a coup for an ITV sitcom) as a pair of bickering hams. In some ways it's very traditional. It's filmed on a single set, with a delirious studio audience, and the script contains only two types of dialogue: set-up and punchline. Almost all the punchlines are putdowns. A character will say his dog is 20 years old. Another character will say at least it's younger than these biscuits of yours. That sort of thing.

Slightly less traditional are the jokes about rape. Middle-aged woman: "I'm so frightened I'm going to be raped!" Gay friend, scornfully: "For God's sake, Violet, nobody wants to rape you!" Middle-aged woman: "What an awful thing to say!"

Rape offers such a rich vein of comic potential that I am bewildered as to why the world of sitcom has overlooked the subject for so long. But not to worry, because Vicious remedies the situation within its first ten minutes with not one, not two, but three rape gags in succession, culminating in the following chucklesome exchange:

Man: Nobody wants to rape you.
Woman: Don't be so cruel.

Mercifully, they didn't move on to discuss child rape, or I swear my sides would have just burst. Presumably the writers are saving this for a later episode - not wishing to use all their best material first time out.

Vicious stars Ian McKellen, Derek Jacobi and Frances de la Tour, and I can only surmise that all three have close relatives being held hostage by the production company because I cannot think of any other reason why such luminaries of stage and screen should agree to such dross.

The same applies to highly respected playwright Mark Ravenhill and former Will & Grace writer Gary Janetti, who provided the scripts, presumably encouraged by the regular arrival of loved ones' body parts in the post.

Jacobi and McKellen play an elderly gay couple - one is camp, and the other less so. And that is about as far as the characterisation goes. Their relationship is based upon bickering and making acerbic comments, because that's what gay people do. In episode one, the couple are thrown into a complete tizz because a handsome young man has moved into their block of flats.

The show is so busy trying to be outrageous that it fails to exercise any quality control on the jokes it lets through. "I went to Oxford!" protests Jacobi, when his intellectual credentials are questioned. "For lunch!" replies McKellen. With conviction, it has to be said, because he is a fine actor. But who knows what agonies he must have suffered delivering such a limp line?

The most annoying thing about Vicious - as opposed to being just plain unpleasant, lazy or depressing - is that somewhere in its stagey, studio-bound set-up, populated by stereotypes, is a decent sitcom struggling to get out. Let me know if it happens.

Vicious doesn't feel new at all. We're talking very trad sitcom here. The "sit" part is the sitting room of a grand central London flat, where the two central characters reside. There are various ways in and out of the room - the flat's main door out on to the landing, doors to other rooms. And there's a telephone (landline).

The "com" comes from the exchange of banter and one-line gags between the two principals, and from the arrival and departure of subsidiary characters through the various entrances and exits, and from the odd telephone conversation. The com is marked by uproarious studio laughter (NO! WHY? IN 2013!).

What's (a bit) interesting about Vicious is that the leads - Freddie and Stuart - are played by two grand knights of the theatre (pronounced theatar, obvs). Sirs Ian McKellen and Derek Jacobi respectively and respectfully. And they're a couple. So you've got two queeny old luvvies basically playing themselves (to the extent that, although you certainly wouldn't know it from listening to them, they originally come from Wigan and Leytonstone, just as Sirs Ian and Derek do).

More like caricatures of themselves: they're camped up to the max, actual drama queens. And they're Acting with a capital A - thespian jousting. Take that darling, no you take that, ouch, you bitch. Which is rather fabulous. Something like Frasier meets Will and Grace meets Henry V. Oh, and then Frances de la Tour turns up, as their bessie mate Violet, and joins the fun.

It's just a shame that the vehicle in which they find themselves isn't a better one. It's not just old-fashioned, pre-Office TV comedy (as opposed to post-office comedy, which is something else, possibly), it's also, frankly, a bit lame. Ding dong, who can that be at the door, ooh hello, a handsome young man to see the flat above. [Turn handle that produces jokes revolving around Freddie and Stuart flirting with handsome youth, putting each other down, and trying - subtly, they think, but actually very unsubtly - to ascertain whether he's gay or not.]

And: "I've been to Oxford." "Yes, for lunch." That's the sort of thing that might be quite funny if you or I said it, in a conversation. But I want a bit more artfulness, wit and surprise from my television. Especially when it's delivered by Sirs Ian and Derek. A Greggs doughnut of a show - albeit filled with Gentlemen's Relish instead of jam, but still a Greggs doughnut.

Vicious, The Job Lot - TV review

Even Sirs Ian McKellen and Derek Jacobi can't rescue Vicious, ITV's feeble, old-fashioned comedy.

Vicious: the least funny new comedy in recent memory

Benjamin Secher reviews Vicious, ITV's new sitcom about an ageing gay couple, starring Sir Ian McKellen and Sir Derek Jacobi.

What a line-up for a sitcom; three of our most accomplished actors - Ian McKellen, Derek Jacobi and Frances de la Tour - star, and the writers are the super-talented playwright Mark Ravenhill and Gary Janetti, who used to work on Will & Grace, one of the classiest comedies on American television in decades. And what do you get? Well, not quite the laugh fest that it might have been (or may yet become), but an opener that had a reasonable hit rate.

Vicious is another back-to-the-future comedy, a one-room sitcom with two of the queeniest gay men to grace our screens since the dear departed Larry Grayson and John Inman. If Dick Emery's Clarence had made an appearance he wouldn't have looked out of place and, with De la Tour's presence, it could be called Rising Camp (sadly not my line - I nicked it).

Freddie (McKellen) and Stuart (Jacobi) are a bickering, gossipy gay couple who live in crepuscular gloom in their Covent Garden flat. Freddie is a never-has-been actor ("You may have seen me in a scene in Doctor Who") who has long since lost his Wigan accent; Stuart is a one-time barman who is still not out to his mother. He's waiting for the right time - "It's been 48 years!" cries Freddie.

Into the flat upstairs moves the attractive youngster Ash (Iwan Rheon), who attracts appreciative looks both from the men and their faghag friend Violet (De la Tour); most of last night's episode concerned their convoluted attempts to find out if he was gay or straight. Don't people just ask if they're interested to know?

The cast are clearly having fun with the bitchy lines, but Jacobi is overdoing the flounce and Ash is as yet underwritten. Too much of Vicious relies on tired comedy tropes; older people are gagging to have sex with people young enough to be their grandchildren, they don't know anything about youth culture ("Is Zac Efron a person or a place?" Violet asks); or they're deaf, dotty and fall asleep easily. Oh please. As for the double rape "joke" everyone involved should be ashamed of themselves, including director Ed Bye.

On the evidence of last night's first episode Ravenhill and Janetti can't decide if Vicious is lazy retro fun for all the family, or an edgy post-watershed show that's taking us to places never previously negotiated on British TV. Let's hope it's the latter over its seven-week run.

ITV appear to have so much faith in Vicious that they commissioned a Christmas Special before this first episode had aired. I despised Vicious from the opening sequence. It isn't the studio audience that makes this feel incredibly dated. It's the gags and the characters.

Derek Jacobi and Ian McKellen are without question two of the countries best actors but in Vicious the pair are reduced to cartoonish characatures of a gay couple.

In the case of Vicious the studio audience setting wasn't what made it feel it dated, it was the over the top performances and the sheer predictability of the jokes. The characters played by our leads were so stereotypical it was as if they were plucked from some sub standard and instantly forgettable 80's sitcom.

Don't get me wrong, I didn't expect either of these sitcoms to be groundbreaking but Vicious felt like a step backwards. The high ratings can be attributed to the curiosity surrounding the series and the amount of trailers ITV have been playing for this. I've seen the opening episode of Vicious and that's enough for me.

Ten Things About... Derek Jacobi

Derek Jacobi will certainly pull in an audience with Vicious, but what else has he been up to? Is there a famous figure in history he hasn't played? To enlighten you, here are ten facts about the acting legend.