Spy

No, that's not Lord Sugar in his first acting role. It's actually a bearded Robert Lindsay playing a recruiter from MI5 in this promising new British sitcom.

Darren Boyd stars as Tim, a bumbling single dad who quits his dead-end job in a computer shop and aces the aptitude test for a civil service job without knowing what he's applying for.

He's obviously not a Spooks fan, or he'd recognise the door.

As well as Spooks, this sitcom, follows in the wake of Johnny English and also the American spy comedy Chuck, whose hero also worked in a computer store.

The show's secret weapon is Tim's son, Marcus (Jude Wright), a cynical, middle-aged head on a nine-year-old's body.

In a different intellectual league from most wise-cracking kids, Marcus is actually more like Stewie, the evil talking baby from Family Guy. Not the most original ingredients, but as long as Spy keeps us laughing, that shouldn't matter.

Darren Boyd, who can do hapless chump in his sleep, stars in this promising comedy espionage caper. Boyd is Tim, a going-nowhere kind of guy saddled with a precocious son, who finds himself fast-tracked into the secret service when his office job application falls into the hands of spooky spymaster Robert Lindsay. Think James Bond rewritten as Uh-Oh7.

Tim really is a loser. As we meet him he's suffering yet another dressing-down from his nastily precocious nine-year-old son (Jude Wright), his withering ex and her annoying new bloke. He's stuck in a terrible retail job. He's lazy, nervous and accident-prone.

Tim's the character Darren Boyd was born to play, in other words, and consequently everything Boyd says and does is funny in this new comedy from relatively unknown writer Simeon Goulden.

Today, Tim's life changes as he accidentally gets a job working as an MI5 agent with licence to kill. The bumbler-out-of-water gag is a bit of an easy comedy win that could feasibly wear thin over a series - but based on the cutting comebacks and rat-a-tat timing here, it probably won't. As Tim's Secret Service colleagues, Robert Lindsay and Rebekah Staton are excellent foils for Boyd.

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Simeon Goulden - Writer of Spy - introduces the show

Sky have been incredibly supportive of me and this project. I didn't want to write a typical pre-watershed family comedy, and Sky have been brave in letting us push the envelope a bit.

Sky 1 is producing some very decent comedy at the moment, the latest example of which is Spy. Darren Boyd stars as Tim, a recently divorced, directionless, unambitious 30-something stuck in a dead end sales assistant job. Stung by his nine year old son's contempt, he applies for a post within the civil service, only to be inadvertently recruited by MI5.

The show doesn't even bother explaining this particular plot contrivance, possibly because there is a lot of setting up to be getting on with, more likely because they have correctly guessed that nobody really cares. Everybody is impatient for hapless Tim to get on with some comedy spying.

Most of episode one was concerned with establishing the comic scenario, so it's probably too early to pass judgment on Spy. But there were some very encouraging jokes, the characters are interesting and Boyd displays an impressive aptitude for slapstick which, I suspect, will come in handy in the future.

The eminently watchable Robert Lindsay co-stars as Tim's suave but secretly alcoholic "control", bearing an altogether disconcerting physical resemblance to Alan Sugar. Although on this showing Sugar's recruitment policy would appear to be a lot more stringent than MI5's.

Spy Episode 1 review

Sky1 have been having a good run of original comedy lately and Spy may just be their best effort yet.

Darren Boyd is a slightly more effective undercover in Spy, a new Sky1 sitcom whose premise seems lifted from the American series Chuck: they're both about hapless, put-upon guys who work in computer stores and are accidentally recruited by the secret services, thenceforth having to maintain their geeky cover while juggling espionage adventures. Chuck, though, is a glossy action show and Spy is, unfortunately, just the usual underachieving British sitcom which somehow manages to take a talented enough cast and a promising enough premise and yet not deliver any real laughs at all.

Boyd's longsuffering Tim looks slightly irritated throughout, though it doesn't stop several women (including the wasted Rebekah Staton) falling for him, while it's interesting that instead of the usual cute, supportive kid, his nine-year-old son is a horrible little monster out to undermine his dad at any opportunity - interesting, but not actually funny. Still, the show has Robert Lindsay, liberated at last from the shackles of being the one to play the longsuffering dad in My Family, now as a demented, grizzled spy boss and clearly enjoying himself hugely. At least someone is.

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