Sam Wollaston

I didn't like this show last time round. I still don't like anything about it. Specifics? OK. Alice, the main character, for one. She's dreary, whiney, negative, she sucks the energy out of every episode like a leech. How's that a protagonist? She's even sucked the energy out of Tamsin Greig, who plays her and who was so wonderful in Green Wing. No wonder she can't find love - Alice that is, not Tamsin (who I don't know about, but imagine has love queuing up).

I don't like the fact that so little happens. Or how implausible the few things that do happen are. I know it's meant to be comedy, not a reflection of real life; but it helps if comedy can keep a toe in plausibility (unless it's so crazy, like Green Wing, that it's funny for that very reason). But Milly falling in love with a shadow - actually more like a projection of a man on to the side of a van that miraculously happens outside her flat every night - well, that's just stupid. And I don't like its irritating jazzy soundtrack, or how small and British it all feels (and I mean both in the worst possible way). Love Soup is insipid broth and I've had enough already.

Sam Wollaston, The Guardian, 3rd March 2008

It's totally bonkers, the product of a strange mind. It's also very funny - much, much funnier than Vivienne Vyle. Simple pastiche is not enough to get a laugh these days, you have to take it to a whole different place. And you have to be a bit mad too, which Serafinowicz clearly is.

A lot of it is not so successful - the Big Brother house full of clones that is frequently returned to, for example, is just tedious. But this is a sketch show, the format for which the phrase 'hit and miss' was invented.

Actually, I'm not convinced that there's a lot of life left in the sketch-show format. Mitchell and Webb did their best to kill it off. But Peter Serafinowicz, with his wacky take on the world, may just have raked up a few dying embers. Maybe next time he'll do something else.

Sam Wollaston, The Guardian, 5th October 2007