Jesse Armstrong

What did we think of the first episode?

Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain are on fire at the moment, aren't they? The seriously funny minds behind Peep Show and Fresh Meat, and who worked on the likes of The Thick of It and Four Lions, have turned their satirical eye on the Metropolitan Police in Channel 4′s Babylon last night.

The cachet of its creators - Danny Boyle, Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain - meant the pilot of this Met police comedy-drama premiered to much hype in February. Yet its ambitious scope - all the way down from the upper echelons of the force to the terminally bored on-the-ground teams - and odd tone (as cynical as a satire, but never ridiculous enough to be properly funny) meant it was hard to love. Those are things that still blight this first series proper, but its makers are, hopefully, playing the long game.

Babylon co-creator Jesse Armstrong on policing

As Babylon returns, one of its writers recalls how the febrile atmosphere around the De Menezes shooting plus a lot of sympathetic input from police helped them to keep this comedy-drama real.

The title of this show is Jamaican English slang for police officer... just in case you were wondering.

And there's plenty else that will have viewers scratching their heads here, too.

It's both a serious drama about coppers, corruption and crime in the capital, and a whip-smart comedy written by Peep Show's Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong.

A feature-length pilot directed by Danny Boyle aired earlier this year.

"It's fabulous that it is now getting a full series," says James Nesbitt, who plays Commissioner Richard Miller.

"I loved the character and the writing.

"I also knew it was going to go to interesting places so I didn't hesitate for a minute to sign up for a whole series."

In the opener, Richard declares, "London is safe, Big Ben's on time, all is well", to his PR executive Liz Garvey (played by screenwriter and film producer Brit Marling).

He then has to deal with a riot in a youth offender's unit caused by the failings of the institution's private security company.

Nothing is as it seems.

Writer? Don't fear the writer-performer

The situation isn't quite as bad as James Cary makes out. Writers do still have some clout in the comedy creation process - Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong, for instance, continue to create their own shows, while Graham Linehan can choose what he wants to write, and when.

Babylon, a new series by Peep Show writers Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong, has no shortage of coppers, as it's set in New Scotland Yard. But it's not by any means a crime procedural.

Instead, the pilot, directed by Danny Boyle, focused on the press office, where a new American boss (Brit Marling) was attempting to establish her authority while a serial killer was on the loose. The fraught relationship between public relations and policing reality is promising territory for caustic treatment, but this suffered from cynical overload. Everyone appeared to be horrified by everyone else, with the characters either speaking in the sort of scathing comic lingo familiar from The Thick of It or in halting disbelief, as though no one could quite believe that everyone else was that cynical.

There were, as you'd expect, some funny lines. "You can't hold back time," one character complained. "You're not Michael J Fox or L'Oréal." But the tone veered all over the place from surreal comedy to dramatic suspense without every quite mastering one, let alone situating it alongside the rest.

You could call it ambitious - and it was - but as a pilot it was a bit of a mess. Still, there was more than enough to suggest that once it has settled in, some of those ambitions may yet be realised. "The problem with cops," said another character in what was a meta-comment on the police on TV, "is that they're cop types."

Radio Times review

Shambles, swearing and spin: if you've missed The Thick of It, you're in luck. Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong have applied the high-farce formula to the Metropolitan Police for this scabrous comedy drama directed by Danny Boyle.

Their Met, led by James Nesbitt as Commissioner, is obsessed with public image: top brass fret so much about media coverage that any actual policing comes a distant second. This gets ugly (and funny) in tonight's pilot, when a series of shootings breaks out across London on the day a new American PR chief (Brit Marling) arrives in the job. The script is sharp and cruel, though occasionally the delivery feels a little too delivered: throwaway realism is what's needed here. Roll on a full series.

Babylon: Danny Boyle's return to TV

Danny Boyle has collaborated with Peep Show writers Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain on Babylon, an ambitious new cop show. Craig McLean went on location.

Channel 4's Fresh Meat has become part of the telly furniture. When that happens to a popular drama, the characters sometimes sit around on actual furniture and do little more than chat.

This can work, depending on the depth of our love for them, but now and again it turns out indulgent, if not disastrous - remember how badly This Life ended? Reconvening for a country house weekend, a favourite show expired through a combination of fierce hotel thermostat and crummy writing. Anyway, Fresh Meat returned for a third series with a lot of sitting around, though of course this is what students do all the time.

They loafed about in the flat, in the union bar - and best of all in Josie's digs in Southampton, where she'd transferred to forget about Kingsley. Only Kingsley was in bed with her and, discreetly, they were "doing it". Oregon was also in the bed because there was no room on the floor, so she said: "I'm having an involuntary threesome." JP was on the floor and he said: "Right, that's it, I'm having a wank." This idea caught on as Howard and Vod woke from their subsidised-beer stupors. "Let's have an orgy!" roared JP. "Come on, it's all been leading to this. Let's just throw ourselves into a sex pie!"

Puerile? Yes. Funny? That too. We know from Peep Show that writers Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain can do third, fourth, fifth series. These boys have staying power; much more than any course-hopping student fancying yet another gap year. And just because plum-coloured trousers have passed through their post-ironic phase, and just because lots of men who aren't posh wear them, and just because Made In Chelsea has given us real upper-class twits to laugh at, that doesn't mean that JP has outlived his comic usefulness.

He wasn't getting enough sex; in pie form or any kind. He decided: "I'm pulling out my privilege." To the host of the Southampton party, a traffic-lights party no less: "Would you kindly announce to your flatmates that a man with a Coutts Gold Card is in the house!" To a girl he fancied: "I could take you to a place on the Kings Road where Prince Harry got a handjob off an assistant manager of Abercrombie & Fitch." To Howard who, incredibly, secured a date with the girl he fancied: "I don't mean to be rude but she's a proper human being. You're the Pig Man of Arbroath." JP is a fabulous fool, played with utter conviction by Jack Whitehall.