Flat TV

Flat TV might just be the most original sitcom in years

Tom Rosenthal's new sitcom Flat TV is the latest offering from BBC Three online - and the Plebs actor has told Digital Spy that he hopes word of mouth will help shows like his to find an audience.

Preview: Flat TV, BBC Three

Since BBC Three went online it has had identity problems. A show such as Cuckoo might be good but it doesn't seem to chime with the bold new future of online viewing. On the other hand Flat TV, which originated on the web, feels exactly like the programme you might expect an online channel aimed at a young audience to make. In both a good way and a bad way.

... the other team to watch are the hugely engaging Tom Rosenthal and Naz Osmanoglu. Shame about the title -- Flat TV -- which would only work if people actually used the phrase 'Flat TV', rather than 'Flat Screen TV'. But that quibble apart, this series has legs. The situation may be hackneyed -- hopeless male flatmates yearning to get off with the much sassier girls in the flat next door -- but it works because the chemistry is great, the lines are funny and the set-up quirkily digressive and post-modern.

The premise is that the boys inhabit a universe where their real lives collide with a TV fantasy world on their in-house channel Flat TV. So, when they're trying to decide which note to pin on the girls' door, their respective efforts are judged by an X-Factor-style panel (with Rosenthal doing a bravura Simon Cowell). It ended disastrously (in a good way) with the boys smashing to smithereens a live lobster in front of the deeply unimpressed girls (one of them an ardent vegetarian who can't eat anything 'with a face'), as part of a misguided attempt to demonstrate a theory one of them read on the internet that lobsters are immortal.

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Flat TV has its roots in a four-part webseries. Its extra time in development shows. It's comfortable with its intriguing and potentially expansive format, and gone is the strange teething period where actors are trying to work out their characters. Easily the most TV-ready of the batch.