James Corden

This skitcom has a confidence out of whack with its material, but there are still some sizeable sniggers, including James Corden's neat Ricky Gervais stitch-up and the Team GB gymnasts on the rings. A nice nod to the old guard, too, with Tim Brooke-Taylor guesting at Bananaman's funeral.

Critics maul lesbian vampire film

James Corden and Mathew Horne, ubiquitous stars of BBC sitcom Gavin & Stacey, have received stinging reviews for their new comedy horror movie Lesbian Vampire Killers.

Review from The Stage

Such was the popular enthusiasm and critical acclaim for Gavin & Stacey that someone at the BBC had the bright idea of inviting its male stars, Mathew Horne and James Corden, to write and perform their own sketch show. After all, anyone can churn out a sketch show, can't they? Horne and Corden are clearly accomplished comic actors, but they are just not comedians and introducing themselves as such at the beginning of the show misfired badly.

James Corden: The backlash begins

After a cocky turn at the Baftas and a panning for his latest sketch show, is the tide turning on the bright new star of comedy?

James Corden has no excuse for this flabby sketch show. One of the sketches in Horne & Corden was based around the idea that a winning 4 X 100m relay team was ruined by the fact that James Corden was running the last leg. "That was disaster," sighed the commentator as Corden wobbled out of contention - a pretty fair summary of the show as it happens.

Several other sketches were based on this brilliant observation: James Corden is fat! (Who knew?!)

Out of the first eight sketches, he took his shirt off and wobbled his belly about in three. He and Horne resorted to flashing their backsides in another.

Corden has turned into one of those comics who think SHOUTING is all you need to be funny. As suggested by the Brit Awards disaster and his demonstrations of the robot on Comic Relief, Corden also seems to be labouring under the idea that he is the only comedian in the world who can dance.

As a fan of Gavin & Stacey it pains me to say it but in the three months since their Christmas special, far from amazing, Corden has just become irritating.

Ally Ross Review

It's not often you're able to pin-point the exact moment a showbiz ego loses the plot. But you can with James Corden. April 20, 2008, having just won two comedy Baftas, he berated the judges for not giving him a third. Alarm bells must have started ringing in TV land and someone, you'd have thought, would've had a quiet word. But no. In less than a year, he's gone from being the likeable chubby fella off Gavin & Stacey to that fat git, with a laugh like a neutered howler monkey, off every-ruddy-thing.

Review: Horne & Corden 1x1

It didn't take us long before we noticed that this wasn't a fun show. After all, it started with James Corden running around a Saturday Night Live-esque set in a fit of incredible self-congratulation that left something of a bad taste in the mouth.

Their dodgy turn on the Brits served as a warning. Left to their own devices, without the narrative of Gavin & Stacey to keep them anchored, Horne & Corden are - and it hurts me to say this - really not that funny.

There are only so many times you can resort to a wobbly belly for belly laughs and, by the end of episode one of their first sketch show, it felt like you'd been chubby-chased in your own living room.

There's no doubt Mathew Horne and James Corden are engaging characters. And they've definitely got chemistry, even if the homoerotic undertow to their relationship feels a tad exploitative given their hetero status. But the big problem with Horne & Corden is the thinness of the material. It was a good ten minutes in before a genuine rib-tickler, and that was the sight of Corden wobbling down the finishing straight of a relay in Lycra running shorts. Which is a bit like laughing at the fat kid at school.

The playground was where H&C seemed stranded. Like over excited schoolboys, the pair of them couldn't keep their hands out their pants, with nearly every gag involving some kind of cock-and-bull story. At worst offensive (a camp war reporter on the Iraq frontline because, obviously, being gay is in itself so hilarious) to downright dull (Superman and Spider-Man embarrassed while stripping in a locker room), this was a sad case of a show trying way too hard.

Sam Wollaston Review

A sketch show by G&S stars Mathew Horne and James Corden was never really going to be my thing. But I wasn't prepared for quite how awful it was.

Tom Sutcliffe Review

One wonders how the first instalment of Horne & Corden would have managed without James Corden's belly, a comedy prop so central to the first episode of their new sketch series that it surely deserved a billing of its own.