Simon Greenall

Pete Versus Life (Channel 4, also Friday), a new five-part comedy drama, took one clever idea and ran amok with it. If life is like sport, then where are the commentators? And so we had Pete (Rafe Spall), an ordinary - that is to say lazy, selfish and intermittently very stupid - twentysomething. And we also had anchorman Colin (Simon Greenall) along with wise-cracking former footballer Terry (Ian Kirkby), who commented on Pete's ups and downs as if they were part of some huge, slam-dunking sport event.

This format was funniest when the pundits used flashy graphics to illustrate run-of-the-mill facts: a profile sheet on Pete's nemesis, Jake (Daniel Ings), which revealed that he could grow a full beard in three days; or a pie chart showing an irritating character's favourite topics of conversation.

In the first episode, Pete inadvertently impressed a girl when he was lying about his commitment to green causes, and had to tie himself up in knots of dishonesty to keep her interested. He was helped - and hindered - by an assortment of friends, including his flatmate Kurt (Chris Geere), who has a rigidly proprietorial attitude towards his Weetabix. It was all funny enough, though the punditry gimmick was at times pushed to the limit. Surely they're not going to follow Pete and his girlfriend into the bedroom, I thought, cringing. But they did, complete with the inevitable performance chart. Schoolboys across the land rejoiced.

Still, this was a perfectly decent comedy, with the added extra of a satire on sporting hyperbole served up on the side. But at the end of the day it will be interesting to see whether this combination has enough legs to last the full 180 minutes.

Ceri Radford, The Telegraph, 9th August 2010

Come Dine With Me has Dave Lamb. Big Brother has Marcus Bentley. Match Of The Day had John Motson and this brilliant new show has Colin King and Terry McIlroy - the world's very first sitcommentators.

Played by Simon Greenall and Ian Kirkby these two are the gimmick that turns what would have been a reasonably amusing but fairly predictable sitcom into a work of utter genius.

With meaningless statistics, on-screen pie-charts and action replays they provide a hilarious blow-by-blow commentary on sports reporter Pete (played by Rafe Spall), whose love life amounts to a series of own goals and sendings-off.

In tonight's pilot episode Pete's latest potential conquest is a girl named Chloe, who is under the impression that he cares passionately about the environment (he doesn't). And we meet all his friends - best mate Rob who's engaged to an excruciating blonde named Anna and housemate Kurt, a Zimbabwean played by Waterloo Road's Chris Geere, who's obsessed with spreading the word about safe sex.

Most promising of all is Pete's nemesis Jake (Daniel Ings) - a dashingly handsome bearded eco-warrior who has just come back from watching the North Pole melt.

And here's another statistic for you: did you know Simon Greenall is also the voice of Aleksandr Orlov in the Compare The Meerkat commercials? Make this one a regular Friday night fixture.

Jane Simon, The Mirror, 6th August 2010

Caroline Quentin, Simon Greenall and Andy Taylor star in this third series of the sitcom that takes a humorous, if not always well-aimed, swipe at modern technologies as they affect our daily lives. In for a kicking this series, as well as blogging, are social networks and Twitter.

Scott Matthewman, The Stage, 8th January 2010