Michael Orton-Toliver

Borderline and the art of flailing in the void

The cast of Borderline all seem to be overflowing with talent. I'm surprised the genuine in-the-moment brilliance of these actors hasn't received more attention.

Fringe Q&As: Mike Orton-Toliver

Mike Orton-Toliver talks about his new show, Jacuzzi.

In its almost twenty years on air, Channel Five have produced very few sitcoms with the only ones I can remember being co-productions with other networks. Written and created by Chris Gau and Michael Orton-Toliver, Borderline is a mockumentary set around the border control of a fictional Northend Airport. Of all of the comedy formats I feel that the mockumentary must be one of the easiest to produce as the characters can spout of expositional dialogue without it feeling out of place. Borderline also does feel like the sort of show that you would see on Channel Five ordinarily with it smacking of the likes of Holiday Airport UK and UK Border Force. The characters that Gau and Orton-Toliver have created are also believable enough and resemble those sort of people you'd see on a low-rent documentary. So for example you have the pencil-pushing boss Proctor (Jackie Clune) who in the opening episode is keen on enforcing the latest mandate from the Home Office. There's also Clive (David Elms) who is perfectly suited to the job and Grant Brodie (Jamie Michie) who is known for detaining a lot of passengers purely based on their ethnicity. Just like any workplace comedy, Borderline has a couple of characters who don't want to be there with Tariq (David Avery) having aspirations to be a DJ and Andy (Liz Kingsman) wanting to be anywhere other than the airport. While I thought that the characterisation of the central five figures was strong, Borderline lacked anything in the way of amusing material that felt original. Anything that was done during Borderline had been done better elsewhere in the likes of The Office, W1A and the incredibly underrated People Like Us. In fact Borderline feels rather old-fashioned when you consider the fly-on-the-wall documentaries that the show spoofs aren't as prominent as they were at the turn of the century. Of the cast I enjoyed the performances given by Clune and Elms both of whom inhabited their characters well and tried their best with the weak material. Whilst I do applaud Channel Five for having a go at producing a sitcom I didn't find anything particularly memorable about Borderline. The most damning thing I can say about the show is that I didn't laugh once and that's not good for the first episode of a sitcom which is meant to make you want to stick around for the rest of the series.

TV review: Borderline, 5

There is very little that is original about Borderline, written by Chris Gau and Mike Orton-Toliver and partly improvised by the cast, but the good news is that there are some nice performances and decent slow-burn gags.

C5's original comedy Borderline has great promise

For the first time in nine years, Channel 5 has created its own comedy series, Borderline. Set in the fictional Northend airport, the mockumentary follows a group of inept border guards trying to enforce Home Office policy. It is truly a comedy for post-Brexit Britain, and it has promise.

Channel 5's first homegrown comedy in 10 years, Borderline is a mockumentary following an inept team of UK border officials. The retro-scripted rockumentary is based in the border security office of Northland Airport, a small provincial airport in the UK. The six-part series follows the daily lives of the staff who work there, their relationships with each other and the obstacles they face on a daily basis. Tackling the hot topic of immigration, Borderline examines what happens when 'normal' people have to make decisions they wouldn't usually make, because of a new government initiative or legislation. Shining a light on the complexities of these decisions, and based on writer Michael Orton-Toliver/p]'s own real life experience, Borderline shows these issues through a humorous lens and, in true British comedy tradition, give us an opportunity to laugh at ourselves in the face of adversity.