Bad Move

This latest in a number of attempts to house Jack Dee in a sitcom has been a pretty decent effort - scotching the enduring, romantic notion of swapping city life for a bigger place in the country. In this last episode of the series, Nicky and Steve invite their friends from Leeds for a long-overdue housewarming party, but this is impossible to keep a secret in the village. This leads to the threat of gatecrashers, as well as help from Matt and Meena.

Why would you even bother with studio sitcom?

On a recent Sitcom Geeks podcast, Dave Cohen and I interviewed Pete Sinclair, who wrote Bad Move with Jack Dee for ITV having previously written Lead Balloon together. Both of those shows are single camera shows, but Pete's previous sitcoms were both studio shows (Mr Charity and All Along the Watchtower).

Jack Dee-penned comedy, in which he and Kerry Godliman play a couple trading the city for the countryside. As per the title, Steve and Nicky have to contend with money troubles, irritating villagers and other disasters besides. There are strong performances from the pair - plus Miles Jupp and Manjinder Virk as smug, sustainability-mad neighbours Matt and Meena - but this series will have to work hard to avoid slipping into "new kids on the block" cliches.

I wonder what led two rather fine R4 hosts, Jack Dee and Miles Jupp, who steer I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue and The News Quiz with panache and, I had thought, a true compass for comedy, to the sub-funny Bad Move? Naked pocket-stuffing greed perhaps? Dee, who co-wrote the thing, downsizes to the country and finds, rather than a rural idyll, recalcitrant locals and dodgy broadband, ho ho. Compared to Rob Beckett's Static last week it's pant-wettingly hilarious. Yet so, comparatively, are rectal polyps.

Bad Move review

At the moment it looks as if the script has sent away its knives for sharpening and not got them back yet. But Dee's miserablism is a gift that keeps on giving.

Bad Move (ITV) refers to Steve's (Jack Dee) and Nicky's (Kerry Godliman) move from the city to the country. But it might also mean the move of Dee and Pete Sinclair, who you'll remember also co-wrote Lead Balloon, from BBC2 to ITV. Or perhaps even to them doing this at all.

There's nothing really wrong with it, it's just a safe, predictable sitcom that could have gone out in 1987. Except that most of the gags in this opener are about not being able to get broadband, because they're in a dip. Meh.

Jack Dee returns to sitcom as half of an urban couple who rashly relocate to the country. Dee plays a web designer, tricky because the new house is "in a dip" and can't seem to connect to broadband; his wife (Kerry Godliman) is a gardener who must learn to charm the uniformly irritating villagers. Like Dee's BBC vehicle Lead Balloon, it relies on intricate plotting and heavily so in an opener that, in an effort to appeal to a wider audience, keeps its gags safe and gentle.

Bad Move: preview

Bad Move is definitely not The Good Life, since Steve and Nicky can't do anything for themselves (and don't want to grow any veg). But it feels even safer than the 1970s sitcom: a couple of enjoyably wry lines and photogenic scenery barely enough to warrant a return visit.