Free Agents

A reasonably tittersome sitcom that has largely kept its head above water thanks to some good performances from the leads (although Sharon Horgan irritates me intensely and I can't work out why). But the real star of the show has been Anthony Head as slimy agency boss Stephen, who manages to do sleazy better than any other actor on TV. It's no Peep Show - nor is it in the same league as The IT Crowd - but, Free Agents hasn't been dreadful, and a second series would be welcome.

Coming hot on the heels of Plus One, Free Agents is Channel 4's second Friday night homegrown comedy series that is fun to watch. And that has got to be some sort of record. The success of Free Agents is entirely down to the strange love story at its heart. "I need a stable environment in which to get better," says the Stephen Mangan character to the girlfriend who isn't his girlfriend (Sharon Horgan). "And if I stay in your stable environment, then we can get better together."

In tonight's episode, the pair head off to a funeral to try and steal the clients of a dead agent, like a couple of wounded sparrows pretending to be vultures.

The always excellent Sharon Horgan stars as the recently bereaved Helen, with Stephen Mangan as her colleague Alex, an acting agent who has just walked out on his young family. We pick up with them after their one-night stand together, and things aren't going too well. With the room to move that a series gives, this didn't try to cram too much in, so the variation in tone that affected the pilot didn't surface. Characters were introduced well and situations nicely set-up. Thankfully it hasn't lost the jet-black comedy that got it commissioned in the first place.

Free Agents, Channel 4's new Friday-night comedy, began with a bit of awkward post-coital conversation. Alex (played by Stephen Mangan) has just slept with his colleague Helen (played by Sharon Horgan). He doesn't regret it, she does (in a cheerful, maybe-back-for-seconds kind of way). That's the sit. The com comes from Chris Niel's salty, rueful script, which very nicely exploits the best features of its cast, and also creates a genuinely comic monster in the shape of Stephen, the boss of the talent agency where Alex and Helen work. Stephen (Anthony Head, shaking off the memory of those twee coffee ads and crushing its skull beneath his heel) is foul-mouthed, lubricious, misogynistic and amoral. And funny.

The first thing you notice about Free Agents is the script. Witty, clever, caustic, shocking and seriously scatological, it is very impressive. So impressive, in fact, that for much of Free Agents you don't notice anything else.

Stephen Mangan and Sharon Horgan star as colleagues at an actors' agency who share an ill-judged night of passion and awake having to deal with the professional and personal consequences. Anthony Head co-stars, and steals scenes, as their lascivious, seedy and sex-obsessed boss who offers them his own perverse brand of agony uncle advice.

Mangan and Horgan are both very fine actors, but seem forever at the service of the shows dialogue. It's a bit churlish to complain about an excess of brilliant one-liners, but the initially breathtaking effect does soon wear off, and it becomes something of an effort to keep up with. Hopefully future episodes will give the characters a little more room to develop, and Free Agents will realise its full potential. It is already 50% funnier that most other comedies, so it can afford to relax a little.

Is this the foulest "comedy" ever?

TV watchdog Ofcom is preparing for a wave of complaints this week over the shocking language used in a Channel 4 sitcom.

The c-word featured three times in the new comedy, Free Agents, first aired last Friday.

Actor Anthony Head plays the head of a talent agency in the six-part series, written by Chris Niel and described as a caustic romantic comedy.

Head, who became famous in the cult show Buffy The Vampire Slayer, said: "Free Agents is a very adult show but it is very ­funny, and I get to say words I've never said on ­television before. It's very ­liberating."

In the first few minutes, Head's character Stephen Cauldwell said: "Good morning, my dear c***s." The f-word also featured 22 times in the half-hour episode.

Tabloid targets C4 sitcom

The Sunday Express has decided that new Channel 4 comedy Free Agents could be "the foulest sitcom ever".

In a news story, the right-wing tabloid states that: "The content of the show is bound to offend viewers."

And, before waiting for any figures, decided that: "TV watchdog Ofcom is preparing for a wave of complaints over the shocking language."

The show, starring Anthony Head, Sharon Horgan and Stephen Mangan, included the word 'cunt' three times and 'fuck' 22 times in its first episode, which aired at 10pm on Friday.

Free Agents Review

Well, you've got to hand it to Channel 4. In the current climate, one assumes that the broadcast of every single word stronger than 'fiddlesticks' is hotly debated among producers and head honchos - and yet this opening episode of Free Agents featured the c-word not once, not twice, but three times.

Episode 1.1 Review

Overall, I'm interested to see where this comedy will go - as the on/off relationship could be difficult to keep momentum with. Hopefully we'll explore Helen and Alex's families (particularly the latter's wife), and the characters at CSM will become more than just bawdy caricatures.

Though Free Agents is a droll and very winning romantic comedy, don't expect soft-focus hearts and flowers. Yes, it's sweet and poignant, but it's also frequently filthy - imagine Richard Curtis doing dirty. The pairing of Stephen Mangan and Sharon Horgan as its emotionally stunted leads - talent agents Alex and Helen - is an inspired one. He's sad and embittered after a messy divorce and misses his children; she binge-drinks to blot out her obsession with her dead fiancee. They have a disastrous date where he cries after sex, then face the crippling embarrassment of having to work together, day in, day out. This possibly sounds gruesome, but it's not; Free Agents (you might recall its 2007 pilot) is a deliciously skewed romance that's adult, modern and funny. And Mangan and Horgan are appealing as two lost and damaged souls in search of happiness.