Tom Reynolds

Radio Times review

I love black comedies. The bleaker and the more tasteless, the better. The Thick of It, Pulling, Getting On, Nurse Jackie. So Sirens, a "comedy drama" based on real-life paramedic Tom Reynolds's blog, looked alluring. Bring on the gallows humour!

It turns out to be a queasy mixture of sentimentality and sexism, spattered with the kind of knuckle-dragging gags last seen in Confessions of a Window Cleaner.

Example: a sexy gas-meter reader has to reach for her ID, which just happens to be tucked in her inside pocket, right near her ample, exposed cleavage. Come on, that kind of thing was dated in 1973.

I have no idea who Sirens, which follows three young male paramedics, is aimed at. Definitely not teens; they don't have the patience. Young men? Maybe; there are gags about erections and masturbation, and the weariest, most aged visual "joke" about a certain sex act that is so spent it's a museum piece.

But then maybe it's aimed at old men. Or tree frogs. Or Pekinese dogs. Who knows? But it should be better. It should be funnier. It should be sharper. It's unforgivable.

Alison Graham, Radio Times, 27th June 2011

Sirens looked promising on paper. Based on Tom Reynolds's popular blog, Random Acts of Reality, which wryly chronicled his time as an emergency response technician in the London Ambulance service, it stars three decent young actors - Rhys Thomas (from Bellamy's People), Kayvan Novak (Chris Morris's film Four Lions) and Richard Madden (Game of Thrones) - as cynical, laddish paramedics striving to treat their often harrowing work as just another day at the office. Unfortunately, it turns out to be one of those comedy-dramas that is neither funny nor dramatic. It combines Green Wing's irritating air of unreality with Skins's desperation to appear edgy, meaning that the banter just doesn't ring true, while the tediously frequent sexual encounters are even less believable.

Sam Richards, The Telegraph, 26th June 2011