Clone

Jonathan Pryce and Mark Gatiss in a new sitcom on BBC3? We sat down in eager anticipation, and 30 minutes later, got up feeling intensely disappointed and frustrated. A high concept plot about a failed experiment to create a super-soldier, three or four good lines and an intrusive laughter track do not add up to a decent new sitcom. This first production from Ash Atalla's (The Office) new production company was a real disappointment - and Pryce looked embarrassed to be in it.

Jonathan Pryce is renowned as a fine classical actor with a good reasoon: he's a bit rubbish at comedy. This was made all too clear in Clone, a curious hybrid of sci-fi and sitcom which cast Pryce as a scientist whose attempt to create a perfect soldier backfires when instead of a Terminator he ends up with a freaky belly-buttonless nerd who behaves like Frank Spencer.

Much hilarity was obviously supposed to ensue but Pryce's boffin was neither crazed nor cruel enough to divert attention from Adam Chase's misfiring script, which strangely gave its only good gag to Mark Gatiss as a mildly psychotic army officer. When Pryce's perfect creation turned out to be a klutz, he told Pryce: 'Your career is over, it's ancient history - like a dial-up internet connection or pubic hair in porn'. If only the rest of Clone had been so well observed.

Clone, a new sitcom in which Jonathan Pryce plays a scientist who unveils a cloned 'super-soldier,' was worth marvelling at. How anyone could think this utter bilge worthy of Pryce's talent and our time is one of the minor wonders of the age.

When you have people like Jonathan Pryce and Mark Gatiss onboard, you had better make it good, but this was pretty lame. The acting was good and Gatiss really was hamming things brilliant, but everything else was pretty awful. There were some nice touches and ideas, but these didn't carry out. In fact it didn't feel like a sitcom, it felt like a very low-budget film. The plot was so familiar and very filmic too. I just didn't see the point of it really.

The laughter track was annoying and, to be honest, so was pretty much everything else. Now, I'm not saying this is bad as Coming Of Age, but the fact that Clone is getting mentioned in the same sentence as that monstrosity says it all.

Blog Review

There's a multitude of good lines - and a multitude of not very good lines. Some of the situations are obvious and clichéd. All the performances are gloriously over the top, sometimes amusingly, sometimes embarrassingly, and the central premise of the show feels weak - like it's just an excuse to have a bloke peeing everywhere in place of decent plotting.

In this new, six-part sitcom Jonathan Pryce plays madcap scientist Dr Victor Blenkinsop, who has dedicated 17 years and three marriages to a top-secret project for MI7. At his side is an inept assistant and, limping behind, barking orders, is his goggle-eyed boss, Colonel Black (Mark Gatiss). His mission is to create a super-soldier and, naturally, it goes horribly wrong: the clone is no deadlier than a newborn. Cue all sorts of social faux pas as Blenkinsop and his overgrown tyke go on the run from the fuming colonel. Unfortunately, this particular fish out of water is more tiresome than funny.

BBC3 has finally found something as desperately bad as Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps; the shock here is that this painful sci-fi 'comedy' stars an actor as highly regarded as Jonathan Pryce. Pryce plays Victor, a government scientist who has created the first human clone, a prototype super-soldier. But the clone (Stuart McLoughlin) turns out to be 'the world's most expensive idiot', a big-eared innocent, whom his creator has to protect when it's decided the clone has to be destroyed.

The brainchild of Adam Chase, one of the key writers on Friends, Clone is a new comedy series starring Jonathan Pryce as a brilliant scientist who unveils the result of his life's work: the first human clone, intended to be a prototype super-soldier. It soon becomes apparent that this is far from the case - the Clone (played along the lines of Tom Hanks in Big by Stuart McLoughlin) is more likely to hug someone than shoot them. There's no doubt that this is an interesting premise for a comedy, it's just a shame that it has to resort to crude gags, canned laughter and weak slapstick to get laughs. Nice riff around the smoking ban though, and Mark Gatiss is great as an odious Army colonel. Must try harder.

A new six-part sitcom starring Jonathan Pryce as Victor Blenkinsop, a research scientist involved in top-secret government experiments, under the watchful eye of the bonkers Colonel Black (Mark Gatiss). When his latest project, a cloned super-soldier, turns out to be no more intelligent than a new-born baby, Blenkinsop takes the clone and his feckless assistant on the run... Unfortunately, a couple of cute visual gags aside (the secret entrance activation, for example), the whole project is derailed by ridiculous slapstick, a weak script and an intrusive laughter track. At one point, Gatiss' Colonel Black says, You just don't get it, do you? My career is on the line! As Pryce's answer of What about my career? is greeted by Black's laughter, I felt the overwhelming urge to join in...