Greg Davies (I)

Lloyd Langford on fun and sustenance

Ahead of his visit to Glasgow International Comedy Festival, Lloyd Langford chats about how the blues can be joyous, wrestling with Greg Davies and what makes a true friendship.

Maybe if Cuckoo had started life on BBC1, audiences would have grown to love it. There are funny moments, both when Greg Davies' efforts at parenting flounder, and when Taylor Lautner is hopelessly bemused by British customs. But a lot of viewers will have switched off wondering: 'What on earth was that supposed to be about?'

BBC Three have brought back Cuckoo, a sitcom that is still named after a character who flew off into the sunset after the show's first series. I personally thought that Robin French and Kieran Quirke's comedy improved during its second run thanks to Twilight star Taylor Lautner whose Dale replaced Andy Samberg's irritating title character. I was surprised how good Lautner was in his role of the straight man up against Greg Davies' frantic lawyer Ken as the two formed a perfect odd couple relationship. We see Dale living in Shanghai and having to defend himself after conducting an illicit relationship with his boss's daughter. Forced to return to Lichfield, Dale seeks sanctuary in the home of Ken and his pregnant wife Lorna (Helen Baxendale) the latter of whom is expecting her baby any day now. As we're now on the third series of Cuckoo I do feel the cast are comfortable in each other's company and therefore the chemistry between the main players is superb. Davies and Baxendale are especially believable as the central down-to-Earth couple even if they both struggle with their West Midlands accents from time to time. Lautner is also great in the role of the rather simple Dale however I'm not quite sure how much of a stretch it is for him to play a good-looking simpleton. Whilst the cast are on form, the material is sadly lacking and there were very few moments during this first episode of series three that actually raised more than a titter from me. In fact the central storyline, in which Ken dreaded the fact that he would have to go on paternity leave, to be quite old-fashioned. In fact the central joke that it would be beneath Ken to look after his child whilst his wife deigned to go back to work felt like something from another decade and felt especially dated when you consider that this series is one of the first to debut on the BBC's new online platform. The final set piece, which involves Ken getting stuck in the hospital while Lorna gives birth, feels like something out of Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em rather than a contemporary sitcom aimed at a young audience. So, whilst the cast deserve some praise for working with what they've been given, overall the third series of Cuckoo hasn't exactly got off to the best of starts which begs the question why it got brought back at all in the first place.

Taylor Lautner and Greg Davies interview

Greg Davies tells us that he's "glad" Cuckoo is debuting on the newly online channel.

Radio Times review

There's a chance to meet the man behind Citizen Khan, Adil Ray. And perhaps because Ray's professional life is spent permanently masked by fake facial hair, he selects "beards" as his first pet hate. His case against them is clearly flimsy, but slightly more convincing than his case against something central to our national culture: tomato ketchup. The audience is never on board for that one.

Elsewhere, in "the Great British Bellyache-Off", Greg Davies has a terrific rant about people who give their dogs very specific instructions ("...and the same can be applied, while I'm on the subject, to toddlers") before telling a story about dressing his dog in his dad's underpants.

Radio Times review

Radio Times Top 40 TV Shows of 2015, #30:

Rik Mayall's deranged dad character was one of the joys of Man Down's first series. How would it work without him? He left an unfillable hole, but Greg Davies skirted around it to deliver a second series as absurdly, tastelessly enjoyable as the first. Man-child Dan was if anything more oafish and disaster-prone, his misadventures more far-fetched, but now with the added peril of a mad aunt played by Stephanie Cole. Davies's scripts were never afraid to push daft ideas almost to breaking point, but he and a superb cast cartwheeled through the comic minefield.

The basic conceit of one-off comedy drama A Gert Lush Christmas was Meet the Parents as Howard's Dan introduced his girlfriend Lisa (Hannah Britland) to his oddball Bristolian family. They included his inappropriate mother Sue (Sophie Thompson), his foul-mouthed father Dave (Neil Morrissey), his drug-taking Uncle Tony (Greg Davies) and his excitable sister Julie (played by Russell's real life sister Kerry). The first twenty or so minutes of A Gert Lush Christmas pulled out almost every awkward family cliché including the womenfolk talking about marriage way too fast and later Dan and Lisa listening to his parents have sex. However, primarily due to the quality of the cast, these scenes were quite well presented and I found myself laughing several times. Where the piece fell down for me was the inevitable moment when Dan's family briefly caused he and Lisa's separation when Uncle Tony spiked his nephew's drink which somehow made him kiss one of his ex-girlfriends. The scenes in which Dan tried to win Lisa back were very weak indeed as was their eventual reconciliation which was framed around a child's magic trick. I do feel a lot of the blame for what went wrong aboutA Gert Lush Christmas can be attributed to Russell Howard's one-note performance as well as he and Williams' poorly paced script. It's quite evident that Howard can't act to save his life and throughout the hour I just felt I was watching the host of Good News visiting his eccentric family. Howard never once made Dan sympathetic and as a result I found myself feeling sorry for his rather sweet-natured if off-beat family. Although there were plus points, namely the turns given by Sophie Thompson and Kerry Howard, ultimately A Gert Lush Christmas fell flat for me which was a shame as it was one of this year's festive highlights that I was looking forward to the most.

Now every bit as much of a festive tradition as hangovers, DFS adverts and running out of milk the second all the shops close, Channel 4's holiday stalwart returns. In a year that saw such events as people arguing over The Dress, Taylor Swift biting chunks out of Apple or bewigged omnifarce Donald Trump being consistently terrible, there's certainly plenty to cover, so it's lucky that Rob Brydon, David Mitchell, Greg Davies and Jo Brand are on standby to cock their respective snooks at 2015's most mockable stories.