Kieron Quirke

It is law and order with a heavy helping of dry sarcasm in this new comedy series from Cuckoo writer Kieron Quirke, which follows an idealistic trainee barrister as he has his career motives put to the test by his cynical pupil master Caroline (Katherine Parkinson). This week, infidelity is in the air - should Will come clean?

TV review: Defending The Guilty

Given the Supreme Court deliberations are dominating the news today, this is either the best or worst day to launch a comedy about lawyers.

Review: Cuckoo, Series Five, BBC Three

The fifth series of Cuckoo is very much what you might call the WTF series. WTF happen to Dale? And WTF is film superstar Andie MacDowell doing in a BBC Three series set in Lichfield?

This is the pilot of a corking comedy by Kieron Quirke (Cuckoo) due to air next year about the trials of pupil barrister Will (Will Sharpe) under the casual tutelage of Caroline (Katherine Parkinson, on fine form): "What makes a barrister, Will? The brain of a fox, the balls of an ox, the hugest of cocks."

Review: Defending the Guilty

Defending the Guilty smartly sends up nepotism and idealism in the criminal justice system.

Cuckoo, series 4 ep 1, review

There's still life and laughs in this daft family comedy.

Almost two years after it began, BBC Three's Cuckoo is back for a second series. Trouble is, the two actors who formed the central romance of the show are gone; U.S comedian Andy Samberg as spaced-out hippy Dale "Cuckoo" Ashbrick, and Tamla Kari as the young British backpacker who fell for his bohemian charms and dragged him back to live with her middle-class parents in middle England.

It wouldn't have surprised me if creators Robin French and Kieron Quirke had decided to let the show die without Samberg and Kari coming back as the unconventional newly-weds, especially as series 1 ended in a satisfying way with few loose ends. Not many people have been crying out for more Cuckoo, let's face it, and Samberg fans can get their fix now he's the lead in U.S hit Brooklyn Nine-Nine over on E4. However, someone at the BBC obviously thought differently, so Cuckoo returns... and, ironically given the titular bird's thieving behaviour, has two new faces in the nest.

Esther Smith (The Midnight Beast) directly replaces Kari as Rachel Thompson, bringing a slightly geekier feel to the character; but rather than recast Cuckoo they've made the peculiar choice to kill him off (a tragic mountaineering accident, with Samberg providing vocals on a sherpa's radio), and bring in his long-lost son Dale. (I guess Cuckoo wasn't very imaginative when naming babies, and--if my maths is correct--must have fathered Dale when he was 14-years-old. Ewww.)

If you can overlook these weird changes, I'm still not sure it was worth bringing Cuckoo back for seconds. Lautner's best-known for showing his pectorals in Twilight movies, so doesn't have the comedy grounding that held Samberg in good stead. Or the same rapport with Greg Davies, as his step-mother's father. Oh yeah, that's another problem: by making Dale a blood relation of Cuckoo, it's all very yucky that Rachel and her mother Lorna (Helen Baxendale) both fancy him. If the show is still intending to be a comedy romance, at heart, this could get very uncomfortable indeed... but perhaps Lautner's character will just become more of an oddball lodger? To be fair to him, Lautner wasn't objectionable in this first episode--he just didn't leap off the screen, playing a slightly quieter character. I just wonder if drawing the Twi-hards is beneficial to Cuckoo, because at least the first series attracted discerning comedy fans aware of Samberg's work on Saturday Night Live, and with comedy group Lonely Island.

We'll have to see if Cuckoo II develops its own identity and memories of Samberg's presence melt away, but I have doubts the chemistry can be replicated. Not that the first series was a diamond, but it could have been polished with a proper return, whereas now it's back to square-one. It doesn't help that laughs were few and far between, either, but maybe future episodes will do better now this awkward transition is over...