Michael Smiley

The success of Mrs Brown's Boys has left everything up for grabs, confirming that certain TV phenomena are just inexplicable. Who cares what critics think when viewers vote with their eyeballs in such large numbers? This Jason Byrne sitcom, transferred to telly from a Radio 2 series, is wretched: clichéd, derivative, predictable and crass. But that doesn't mean no one's going to like it.

Father Figure is trad. Looking to the gentler end of domestic comedy (Not Going Out, Outnumbered) for its inspiration, it leans towards the obvious at all times. Wondering what's going to happen to that large and elaborate cake in the living room? Don't expect to be surprised. But Byrne lacks Lee Mack's sheer relentlessness and the knack of taking things one step further than they might - done well by Outnumbered.

So Byrne's bumbling dad Tom just feels like an accumulation of his predecessors, but a dead end rather than a culmination. There are some decent performers in Father Figure including Michael Smiley and Pauline McLynn. But they just haven't been given anything to work with. Poor.

Phil Harrison, Time Out, 18th September 2013

Do you find it hilarious when small children say cheeky things like "poo!"? Do you shriek with delight when a grown man is unable to cook a meal without resorting to ironing the steak?

Do you find it wholly plausible that someone would steal a massive tiered wedding cake and bring it to a dinner party as their contribution to dessert? Do you find that watching people being repeatedly covered in food, falling over, or falling over into food makes you roll on the floor laughing? Then, just like the studio audience who go into paroxysms at every scene, you'll love Father Figure.

A sort of combination of Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em and those kids' shows where adults are constantly being gunked, Jason Byrne's sitcom is a transfer from Radio 2. His amiable stand-up persona is replicated as hapless but well-meaning dad to smart-arse kids, husband to past-caring just-open-the-wine wife, son to overbearing parents (Pauline McLynn as his mum is more glamorous than her Father Ted character Mrs Doyle but no less a nag), friend to a wasted Michael Smiley and neighbour to some cardboard people who are only there to react in horror to his gaffes.

The show is relentlessly middle-of-the-road, determinedly populist and wholly idiotic. Were it not for the sweary-words and a few double entendres, it would be pitched firmly as family entertainment and has clearly been commissioned to try to cash in on the unexpected success of Mrs Brown's Boys.

In its favour, I suppose it's a bit better than 
Ben Elton's megaflop 
The Wright Way. It will no doubt run 
for years.

The Scotsman, 14th September 2013