James Corden

Video: James Corden has 'One Chance'

James Corden talks about playing Britain's Got Talent winner Paul Potts in the film One Chance.

Mid-year review: The Wrong Mans

I didn't expect to be enjoying The Wrong Mans as much as I am, but it's doing something incredibly well: the thriller aspect is effective, while the humour is present without overshadowing the drama. It's a very difficult balance to get right, but writers James Corden and Mathew Baynton have managed it.

The accidental crime-fighters negotiate an end to the bungled hostage situation they are caught up in, but instead of returning home the pair are drawn deeper into a strange criminal underworld. James Corden and Mat Baynton's comedy is reminiscent of the high-concept farce of The Comic Strip Presents, with its inept baddies and hopeless protagonists. (Comic Strip alumna Dawn French cameos as Corden's overbearing mum.) Far slicker than its 1980s counterpart, it's just as charmingly silly.

James Corden and Michael McIntyre watch football

James Corden and Michael McIntyre were seen enjoying a spot of male bonding as they watched the Tottenham Hotspur v West Ham United game on Sunday.

Peep Show meets the Coens in this noirish comedy, as two office workers (Mat Baynton and James Corden) are drawn into a testy gangland conflict. A slightly unlikely mish-mash of genres, but one that comes off as both stylish and fun.

James Corden laughing in the face of danger

The series looks wonderful, expensive and moody and there are several amazing cameos in it (David Harewood, late of Homeland, appeared for a few bewildering seconds). All this just seemed rather wasteful in the circumstances: the script somehow doesn't live up to it.

I'm not sure who Jim is in The Wrong Mans (BBC Two). But he phones Mr Stevens just at the right time. Or the wrong time, depending on how you see things and how you see James Corden in particular. You see, Mr Stevens, whose wife has been kidnapped by Mr Lau, has Corden's character Phil in a car crusher. It exerts 150 tonnes of pressure and can crush a car in 45 seconds, so it's not going to have much trouble with Phil, Mr Stevens tells him.

I think it's another film spoof. Goldfinger, Kick-Ass, Superman III, Pulp Fiction again? All of the above possibly. I know there's Hitchcock in there but I haven't been spotting all the film references in The Wrong Mans.

Go on then, Mr Stevens, let's see it, please! There are some - me included - who think that James Corden would be much improved by being subjected to 150 tonnes of pressure and crushed into a more compact cube-shaped version of James Corden. Where's his head? Oh, I see, round there, ha, yes I think that works.

No, I'm not being fattest, I'm being guffest. Meaning I'd like to see the guff, the hot air, all the shouting and laddishness, maybe the contents of his colon too, squeezed out of him. And if that makes him smaller, and cuboid, and therefore more easily stored away somewhere, then so much the better. I'm not a massive fan, can you tell? But then this bloody Jim rings, and Mr Stevens changes his mind about crushing Phil.

I'm not a massive fan of The Wrong Mans either. As I mentioned the other day, I suspect that Corden and Mathew Baynton are more performers than writers. This feels like they've sat down together, chuckling at everything and chucking everything at it - their favourite movies, a bag of poo, an awful lot of themselves, obviously. They've had a brilliant time making it ... yup, that's it, self-indulgence; I think they're having a much better time than I'm having, and I'm not sure that's how TV should be. Even though the BBC has clearly thrown a whole lot of money at it it, because these are big comedy stars and they've got some famous guests coming on too, it still doesn't work, because it's not smart enough in the first place. A comedy thriller that's too silly to be thrilling and not funny enough to be funny.

Oddly, I seem to be a little bit on my own here, and everyone else thinks it's brilliant. Yeah, well, everyone else is an idiot too then.

Mat Baynton and James Corden's comedy thriller continues. Their two hapless office workers have been kidnapped and need to do some fast talking to explain it all. The plot developments aren't that interesting in themselves (competing factions are after some missing money), so much of the humour relies on the disparity between the mundane everyday and a violent underworld. Baynton's Sam - vulnerable yet principled - is the more interesting of the pair, while Corden is either naive or annoyingly boorish, depending on your viewpoint.

If you couldn't tell that The Wrong Mans was a Big Deal from the explosive trailers and high production values, then the quality of the supporting cast should confirm it: Dougray Scott, Sarah Solemani, Benedict Wong, Emilia Fox, Nick Moran, Dawn French, Tom Basden...

Even more impressively, each turn (Fox and French excepted, although we suspect there'll be more to come there) makes an impression, while creator-stars Mat Baynton and James Corden nail the odd couple dynamic that keeps this occasionally leaky vessel afloat. We join Sam (Baynton) and Phil (Corden) drifting further out of their depth at the hands of psychotic gangsters Moran and Wong, before a show-stopping presentation from Sam saves his professional hide while bringing the danger even closer to home.

It's in these collisions of the workaday and the white knuckle that The Wrong Mans works best, as the more traditional thriller elements stubbornly fail to coalesce with any conviction. But it's never dull and frequently very funny.

A town planner's view of The Wrong Mans

James Corden and Mathew Baynton's new comedy of council staff engulfed by a sinister plot gets some things spot-on - but planners are more fun in real life, says Derek Carnegie.