Pat & Cabbage

Why are sitcoms about pensioners so unfunny?

ITV's Pat and Cabbage is the latest sitcom about old age to misfire, says Gerard O'Donovan.

Pat & Cabbage review

There was just nothing engaging about the characters. It would have been bad enough not to have the supporting cast developed, but for the two leads not to be either was very disheartening.

You've heard of the Grey Pound. Pat And Cabbage is what you might call a symptom of the Grey Remote: TV geared to older people, ie the ones who actually watch TV on a television set, not a handheld device. Inevitably, this seems amiable stuff, the vaguely interesting premise a cut above the likes of My Family. Pat (Barbara Flynn) and Cabbage (Cherie Lunghi) are cast as sixtysomething divorcees - in a time when 60 is considered youngish. What will their dependents make of their new alliance, and their new start?

Pat and Cabbage are 60-something friends. Pat (Barbara Flynn) is a bit staid, Cabbage (Cherie Lunghi) is devil-may-care. Pat's daughter thinks Cabbage is a bad influence on her mum. But Pat gets caught up in her friend's schemes. A painfully jaunty soundtrack accompanies every single telegraphed gag - Pat's daughter brings a hamster into the house, Pat is afraid of hamsters, you know what's going to happen next.

Pat and Cabbage is written by actresses Amy Shindler (Brenda Tucker in The Archers) and Beth Chalmers and is produced by the people who gave us Last Tango in Halifax. But Pat and Cabbage is no Last Tango in Halifax.

Pat and Cabbage are the type of bubbly suburban best friends you only see in sitcoms: they meet for morning jogs, midday pilates and afternoon coffee over the kitchen counter. They moan about their grown-up kids interfering in their lives and gossip about who they fancy and how big their bums are.

If you're of the same age or going through a similar experience - that is: newly retired, newly single and free to flirt with men you meet while dropping your grandchild off at nursery - you might find the pair's antics at least mildly diverting. Otherwise, it's hard to see the comedy in Pat (Barbara Flynn) and the inexplicably named Cabbage (Cherie Lunghi) making off with a neighbour's wheelie bin (apparently it was Pat's) or parking up outside the house of a love interest like a couple of schoolgirls-cum-stalkers.

By the end of the first episode of this new ITV sitcom, you might share the sentiment of Pat's daughter, who pointedly asks: 'Why can't you just go on a coach trip to see Phantom of the Opera like every other mother?'.