Guy Jenkin

A strange solo outing for Guy Jenkin, co-writer of Ballot Monkeys. On an RAF base in the British countryside, a squadron who used to fly bombers in Afghanistan now sit controlling drones. In this, er, pilot episode, a hit on a high-profile jihadi turns bad, and it all goes a bit Thick of It as the details leak out. Can comedy flow from such a dark and airless subject? Vincent Franklin, Rufus Jones and a particularly fine Hugh Skinner - a dashing toff here, instead of his dim one in W1A - lead what proves to be a hopeless mission.

With three days to go before polling day, we can presumably expect events in the election battle bus sitcom to grow ever more frenetic. But in a controlled way, because Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkin perfected the knack of dropping topical material into the mix at the last moment back in their days writing Drop The Dead Donkey; while the likes of Hugh Dennis, Ben Miller and Sarah Hadland can be relied on not to fluff their lines. Continues and concludes tomorrow and Wednesday.

In an election where the Tories, to use Lynton Crosby's terminology, keep dropping dead cats on to the table, here come the creators of Drop The Dead Donkey. As they did with their 1990s news-com, Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkin have written scripts with gaps, to be filled at the last minute with oven-hot satire. The action flips between various shades of panic on board the Labour, Conservative, Lib Dem and Ukip battle buses. A strong cast is led by Ben Miller, Sarah Hadland and the lord high chancellor of topical zingers, Hugh Dennis.

This election satire promises to be so topical, it will only be written in the hours before it's broadcast.

Wherever they aim their comedy sights, it's certainly bound to liven up what's been a distinctly laugh-free election campaign.

What we do know is the show will be written by those clever bods Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkin, who brought us Drop the Dead Donkey and Outnumbered. A ringing endorsement if ever there was one.

And it will star the likes of Hugh Dennis, Trevor Cooper, Sarah Hadland, Ben Miller and Hattie Morahan. So far, so good.

The trailer features the cast as confused, gormless politicians, all effectively scratching their heads and wondering what to say. So it's all looking rather authentic.

The five half-hour episodes, broadcast in the run up to the May 7 election, will intercut between the campaign buses of the four main parties - Conservative, Labour, Liberal ­Democrats and UKIP, who don't really need to be satirised.

On each bus, cameras follow the staff including analysts, interns, IT geeks, social media monitors, empathy consultants (seriously?) and even bus drivers as they deal with the latest crisis or drama. A crisis or drama that we will have only just heard about in real life.

Radio Times review

Bored and unamused by the election? Well, this new comedy from Drop the Dead Donkey and Outnumbered creators Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkin may cheer you up. It takes you onto the battle buses of the Tories, Labour, Ukip and Lib Dems (the Greens appear to have been snubbed), with key scenes written and performed close to transmission. The idea is to insert highly topical material at the very last minute, something which worked so stunningly in Drop the Dead Donkey.

And with great performers like Ben Miller, Hattie Morahan and Sarah Hadland to call on and a rich collection of characters including press officers, empathy consultants, special advisers (aka "spads"), IT wizards, social media monitors, political analysts, interns and of course bus drivers, chances are this may well get your vote.

Ballot Monkeys: all too believable & all the funnier

Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkin's election campaign comedy lives up to the hype with help from an impressive comedy cast.

Ballot Monkeys: A sitcom in poll position

Ballot Monkeys, a new five-part comedy series that hitches a ride with the party apparatchiks on the general election battle buses, will be shot at the last-possible moment to make sure its satire is absolutely up-to-the-minute. It's an exciting concept that would nevertheless have most writer-directors swinging from the trees with nerves. Not Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkin.

What We Did On Our Holiday review

What We Did On Our Holiday is proof of the adage 'never judge a book by its cover'. Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkin's movie is not the film its trailer makes it out to be, it's a lot more surprising and ambition than the sedate fare you'd expect based on the promos.

What We Did On Our Holiday review

If you like Outnumbered, you'll love this, as there's more than enough surprises to justify Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkin taking their tried and tested approach with child actors to the big screen.

One of the biggest problems with TV sitcoms centring on families is what to do when the child actors get older. This is particularly problematic with a show like Outnumbered, which returned for a fifth and final series this week, primarily because the comedy relied on the innocence and naivety of the kids. Almost seven years on, the children are looking incredibly old most noticeably Ramona Marquez who started playing Karen when she was only five. Now twelve years old, Marquez's Karen was the centre of the action this week as parents Pete (Hugh Dennis) and Sue (Claire Skinner) worried that she was fitting in at her new challenging school. To an extent I feel that writers Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkin have updated the character well as she has now entered her stroppy pre-teen phase. She is a lot sulkier and I was shocked when I actually heard a swear word come out of her mouth. The school that Karen has been sent to has a very strict dress code and Karen is finding some of the work incredibly hard. She's also not fitting in all that well, as we see when she is forced to spend time with her one of her classmates after school. Karen's problems at school lead the ever-worried Sue to send out a late night e-mail to the parents of her daughter's classmates asking if they've had similar problems. The responses she receives are fairly shocking, prompting Pete to tell her that sending any e-mails after 11pm is a bad mistake. Whilst Karen's problems at school ring true, I was less interested in her search for a missing hamster. It just seemed to me like this story was something that Karen would've done while she's younger and I fail to believe that this new sulky brunette girl would be that bothered about a pet.

Elsewhere Karen's two brothers are more ill-served by the storylines especially Ben (Daniel Roche) who is auditioning for the school play. The character of Ben was great when he was a destructive young lad but as a teenager he seems to be a little lost. Though the thought of him playing the lead in a musical version of Spartacus did raise a few chuckles, this was the least realistic of the three plots. I did feel that there was more truth in the antics of older son Jake (Tyger Drew-Honey) who this week got a dodgy tattoo. This was a rite-of-passage story that a lot of teenagers have experienced and the fact that Jake wanted to remove the body art by the end of the episode was also incredibly realistic. Indeed, one thing that Hamilton and Jenkin have always excelled at is making their comedy feel as believable as possible. That's why Outnumbered worked so well when it started and why, for the most part, it still survives in 2014. Jake and Karen's story suited their progression and Pete and Sue continued to be the stereotypical fretting parents. The main thing I found about this series of Outnumbered, as compared to previous outings, is that I didn't laugh as much. While there were a few chuckles and a couple of titters I mostly felt that the comedy was well-observed but didn't find it funny enough to laugh out loud. Despite this I still found a lot to like about Outnumbered and feel that the chemistry between the five actors is still as fine as it was seven years ago. My only hope is that the Brockman family is given a fitting send-off and Outnumbered gets a suitably anarchic final series.