Borderline

Borderline and the art of flailing in the void

The cast of Borderline all seem to be overflowing with talent. I'm surprised the genuine in-the-moment brilliance of these actors hasn't received more attention.

The mockumentary set in "Northend Airport" returns. Once again, we find border control officer Proctor (Jackie Clune) and co muddling through in a generally incompetent manner. Things brighten up in the first of this double bill when Kris Marshall makes an appearance as a minor royal who likes "duty free - although of course I never pay tax on anything", but otherwise the laughs are thinly distributed.

The Met meet Northend Airport's border-force team as this border-control spoof continues. It's a crime-cracking coupling as likely as Sherlock and Eamonn Holmes, yet Proctor's posse are tasked with processing a criminal who is arriving by plane. Was their dedication to duty the reason for their selection? Or is it merely that Northend is dreary enough to deter press attention? Either way, with all other activity on hold, idling about doing nothing is the day's main task. So, business as usual.

The comedy mockumentary series about security staff at Northend airport continues. Tonight, Chief Inspector Linda is distracted by her husband's recent career change, a Ukrainian lingerie entrepreneur is pulled in on a "random" check, while Andy's attempt to bond with a lively hen party reveals her fun side, sort of. A bit more signposting of forthcoming jokes than you might expect, perhaps, but the decent performances generally win out.

In its almost twenty years on air, Channel Five have produced very few sitcoms with the only ones I can remember being co-productions with other networks. Written and created by Chris Gau and Michael Orton-Toliver, Borderline is a mockumentary set around the border control of a fictional Northend Airport. Of all of the comedy formats I feel that the mockumentary must be one of the easiest to produce as the characters can spout of expositional dialogue without it feeling out of place. Borderline also does feel like the sort of show that you would see on Channel Five ordinarily with it smacking of the likes of Holiday Airport UK and UK Border Force. The characters that Gau and Orton-Toliver have created are also believable enough and resemble those sort of people you'd see on a low-rent documentary. So for example you have the pencil-pushing boss Proctor (Jackie Clune) who in the opening episode is keen on enforcing the latest mandate from the Home Office. There's also Clive (David Elms) who is perfectly suited to the job and Grant Brodie (Jamie Michie) who is known for detaining a lot of passengers purely based on their ethnicity. Just like any workplace comedy, Borderline has a couple of characters who don't want to be there with Tariq (David Avery) having aspirations to be a DJ and Andy (Liz Kingsman) wanting to be anywhere other than the airport. While I thought that the characterisation of the central five figures was strong, Borderline lacked anything in the way of amusing material that felt original. Anything that was done during Borderline had been done better elsewhere in the likes of The Office, W1A and the incredibly underrated People Like Us. In fact Borderline feels rather old-fashioned when you consider the fly-on-the-wall documentaries that the show spoofs aren't as prominent as they were at the turn of the century. Of the cast I enjoyed the performances given by Clune and Elms both of whom inhabited their characters well and tried their best with the weak material. Whilst I do applaud Channel Five for having a go at producing a sitcom I didn't find anything particularly memorable about Borderline. The most damning thing I can say about the show is that I didn't laugh once and that's not good for the first episode of a sitcom which is meant to make you want to stick around for the rest of the series.

I don't look to Channel 5 for comedy. I don't look to them for anything, really, unless I've taken a severe blow to the head and want to recover by watching Big Brother and car chases. So I was surprised to find myself e-mailing their press team about this new show.

It's a spoof documentary set in the fictional Northend Airport and follows the bungling Border Force as they try to cope with directives from the Home Office that order them to keep out the bad guys whilst remaining politically correct and most definitely not using that awfully bad word - profiling. "No-one is using that word!" gasps the boss. So when an Arab passenger turns up draped in a headscarf and white robes, the beleaguered official sighs, "Aw man! We're definitely gonna have to ask you some questions." But definitely not in a "profiley" way...

It's topical, yes, but at the same time feels very dated. The spoof documentary set in an incompetent workplace was done to perfection by The Office back in 2001. This often feels like a tepid tribute act, but does have some good moments.

New mockumentary, narrated and exec-produced by Ralf Little, that follows a dysfunctional border control team at a minor UK airport as they cope with impassive foreign nationals, drug smugglers and bellicose Home Office directives. It's The Office with cavity searches, although judging by this bumpy first episode, it may take a while to find a groove. Edinburgh fringe veteran Jackie Clune is reliably good as harried team leader Linda Proctor.

TV preview: Borderline

Much is made of how Borderline is part-improvised, though it's the result, not the process, that matters, and the subdued tone does mean it's relatively short on laugh-out-loud moments, though there are plenty of droll smiles. And while the characters are engaging, they don't have the strong personalities that would make Borderline an appointment-to-view, though that's always a hard call to make from just one episode before we know them properly.

TV review: Borderline, 5

There is very little that is original about Borderline, written by Chris Gau and Mike Orton-Toliver and partly improvised by the cast, but the good news is that there are some nice performances and decent slow-burn gags.