Robin French

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?

Cuckoo, series 4 ep 1, review

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

BBC Three have brought back Cuckoo, a sitcom that is still named after a character who flew off into the sunset after the show's first series. I personally thought that Robin French and Kieran Quirke's comedy improved during its second run thanks to Twilight star Taylor Lautner whose Dale replaced Andy Samberg's irritating title character. I was surprised how good Lautner was in his role of the straight man up against Greg Davies' frantic lawyer Ken as the two formed a perfect odd couple relationship. We see Dale living in Shanghai and having to defend himself after conducting an illicit relationship with his boss's daughter. Forced to return to Lichfield, Dale seeks sanctuary in the home of Ken and his pregnant wife Lorna (Helen Baxendale) the latter of whom is expecting her baby any day now. As we're now on the third series of Cuckoo I do feel the cast are comfortable in each other's company and therefore the chemistry between the main players is superb. Davies and Baxendale are especially believable as the central down-to-Earth couple even if they both struggle with their West Midlands accents from time to time. Lautner is also great in the role of the rather simple Dale however I'm not quite sure how much of a stretch it is for him to play a good-looking simpleton. Whilst the cast are on form, the material is sadly lacking and there were very few moments during this first episode of series three that actually raised more than a titter from me. In fact the central storyline, in which Ken dreaded the fact that he would have to go on paternity leave, to be quite old-fashioned. In fact the central joke that it would be beneath Ken to look after his child whilst his wife deigned to go back to work felt like something from another decade and felt especially dated when you consider that this series is one of the first to debut on the BBC's new online platform. The final set piece, which involves Ken getting stuck in the hospital while Lorna gives birth, feels like something out of Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em rather than a contemporary sitcom aimed at a young audience. So, whilst the cast deserve some praise for working with what they've been given, overall the third series of Cuckoo hasn't exactly got off to the best of starts which begs the question why it got brought back at all in the first place.

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...

Cuckoo writers' fight to set a sitcom in Birmingham

Writers Robin French and Kieron Quirke on setting their sitcom in the Midlands.

British and American humour clash head-on in Robin French and Kieron Quirke's comedy which, on the evidence of the opener, manages to be both funny and annoying. When Rachel (Tamla Kari) arrives home from her gap year in Thailand, she surprises her doting, quirky parents, Ken and Lorna (the excellent Greg Davies and Helen Baxendale), by introducing them to her new husband, Cuckoo (American actor/comic Andy Samberg), claiming she told everyone about the wedding on Facebook. "I don't do Facebook, I'm 45," replies her dad. Cuckoo describes himself as "part teacher, part visionary, part firebrand". Needless to say, Ken isn't exactly enamoured with the goonish Cuckoo and wonders how her new man is going to support his impressionable daughter.