Lauren O'Neil

There are surprises, though less charm, in new comedy from Channel 4's Bugsplat!, from Drop the Dead Donkey and Outnumbered writer Guy Jenkin. Bugsplat! is set on an English RAF base, where drone pilots coordinate attacks on far-away targets. The press of one big red button in a converted shipping container in a field annihilates enemies and any number of innocent "collaterals". This brutal premise forms the basis of George Brant's fierce monologue Grounded, which is currently running off-Broadway with Anne Hathaway as its drone pilot. But the treatment here is more daft than harrowing, reaching for dark humour in the fundamental absurdity of the situation. That is not, in itself, offensive, though the jokes never quite land, hovering uncomfortably between trying to be both cautious and outrageous.

In its opening scene, a target vehicle is tracked by a drone as it moves from wilderness to town to marketplace to an orphanage for blind children, the collateral damage of any attack becoming increasingly unacceptable. "It'd kill 50 children!" one observer objects. "Health and safety gone mad," grumbles splat-hungry pilot Lexi (a caustic Lauren O'Neil), as she hovers over the button. Eventually, she gets to press it. She celebrates with a drink - they've taken out the bad guy. Only they haven't, and the real bad guy tricked them, and WikiLeaks is all over it and what appeared to be an operational triumph quickly turns into a PR disaster, particularly since someone filmed them dithering over the approach.

Vincent Franklin, last seen in Russell T Davies's Cucumber, plays exasperated Wing Commander Barry, who tries his best to manage this messy cross between a bureaucratic nightmare and "Xbox shit". But for a modern sitcom dealing with such current subjects, it feels strangely old-fashioned. Were it not for the subject matter, it is easy to imagine it airing on ITV's 9pm Friday-night spot. There are touches of wit - I enjoyed the use of "to decease" as a verb - but the obvious problem is that the real situation is so tragic and absurd that it requires razor-sharp satire to slice it open. The Thick of It, which is a clear point of comparison, worked because its writing was ruthless. This doesn't go far enough. When Fiona Button's PR manager Gina attempts to take control of the disaster - "What's a cock-up but a triumph that hasn't been spun right?" - you're left wishing Malcolm Tucker would come and show them how it's all done.

Rebecca Nicholson, The Guardian, 7th May 2015