The Delivery Man

Netflix to save The Delivery Man?

Netflix could move into commissioning British comedy by picking up axed ITV sitcom The Delivery Man.

Review: The Delivery Man

It is fair to say I was sceptical when the series of The Delivery Man began, but the excellence of both the cast and the writing has swayed me. This comedy is speedy, ludicrous in places and incredibly well scripted, making it a very enjoyable watch that really came into its own as the episodes progressed.

ITV comedy The Delivery Man packs in the laughs

Don't say it too loud, but it's looking like ITV just might have given birth to a seriously funny comedy.

This hospital sitcom is half joke-fest, half soap opera, as if a team of American gag-writers had taken over Holby City. There isn't a wasted word. If you enjoy rat-a-tat one-liners, the way Friends and Roseanne were written, The Delivery Man will win you over.

The stories are set in a maternity wing where Matthew, an improbably handsome male midwife (Darren Boyd), has set all the women's hormones raging.

His boss (Fay Ripley) is throwing herself at him, his co-worker (Aisling Bea) is flirting like a stoat on heat, and even the expectant mums look ready to dump their husbands and waddle away with him.

After three episodes, we really need to know who Matthew will end up bedding. And that means we'll have to keep watching every week, because ITV weren't stupid enough to give away the whole series in advance.

If you want to binge-watch The Delivery Man, you'll have to wait till the end of the series. Or better still, treat yourself to half-an-hour each Wednesday. What's wrong with doing it the old way?

Paparazzi descend on Easthill Park hospital when Comfort Evans, ditzy star of reality TV show SHAG ("Sussex Hunks and Girlfriends"), pops in for an optimistically incognito pregnancy checkup. It doesn't take long for copper-turned-midwife Matthew (Darren Boyd) to get roped into a campaign to put the press corps off the scent. If ITV's maternity-ward sitcom can feel a little underwritten, a game cast - notably Boyd, Fay Ripley and Pompidou escapee Alex Macqueen - enhance the farce as best they can.

There's an odd mix of ingredients in this sitcom about a policeman-turned-midwife. Written by the team that made Channel 4's strange, funny Green Wing, and featuring the offbeat skills of Darren Boyd, it is very much an ITV primetime comedy. The result is some verbally dexterous stuff from Boyd, alongside Paddy McGuinness's likable gurning, and a farce-heavy plotline, in which an expectant father has trouble remembering which room he's meant to be in, while Matthew makes the error of offending nurse Lisa's boyfriend.

Radio Times review

Darren Boyd's mildly irritating male midwife Matthew is back for a second stab at this gag-heavy and rather preposterous comedy. Here he has to deal with a father who has two women in labour at the same time (likely, huh?) and a silly subplot involving an altercation with the thuggish boyfriend of the colleague he fancies. There are some decent lines but a few gas-and-air duds you wouldn't expect from Green Wing writers Robert Harley and James Henry.

The Delivery Man is that most endangered of animals, a seriously funny ITV comedy, as in I laughed out loud, and I very seldom do that. The premise is simple. He's a copper who's suddenly retrained as a male midwife, and that's every bit as funny as it sounds, and must have been enough to get it past at least two phalanxes of ITV comedy bods deluded enough to give money to Keith Lemon rather than taking him behind a barn and hitting him with an axe.

Turns out it's quiet genius. This is partly down to Darren Boyd's pitch-perfect stutter-timing. Half way through his early watercooler moment with putative love interest Lisa (Aisling Bea), he compliments her gauchely on her selection of Dr Pepper - "Good choice. Did you know that Vietnamese prostitutes favoured this for its antispermicidal qualities?" On he stutters, with his tallness, insisting on comparing her favourably to a Vietnamese prostitute but still managing to insert the phrase "vaginal douche". And I suddenly knew I had to record the whole series. Others in the cast - Alex McQueen, Llewella Gideon - add gleeful panache. How ever did they get through the ITV "comedy" net?

I was slightly hopeful going into The Delivery Man primarily as director Victoria Pile created Green Wing whilst writers Robert Harley and James Henry also worked on the classic Channel 4 sitcom. Unfortunately, The Delivery Man has none of the surreal wit or classic characters of Green Wing and instead feels like it's been lifted from the 1970s. The central premise of The Delivery Man sees another Green Wing veteran in Darren Boyd play Matthew, a newly qualified midwife attempting to navigate his way through a female-dominated environment. I think I would've had more time for The Delivery Man if Matthew had proved his female colleagues wrong by proving himself to be a valuable member of the team and changing their expectations of him. But instead he was presented as a bumbling fool who was constantly lying to his patients, their families and the rest of the hospital staff whilst struggling with the simplest of tasks. Whilst watching The Delivery Man I kept wondering what would've happened if their was a sitcom about a bumbling woman entering a male-dominated environment and doing a really bad job. I personally think there would be a general outcry but nobody appeared to bat an eyelid when that was the central joke of the piece. A potential romance between Matthew and fellow midwife Lisa (Aisling Bea) already has little interest whilst the supporting characters all feel a little one-dimensional. This is a shame when the cast includes such heavyweights as Alex MacQueen and Fay Ripley, the latter of whom at least tried her best as well-meaning senior midwife Caitlin. The biggest problem though was that The Delivery Man didn't provoke a sufficient amount of laughter from yours truly. In fact the only real laugh I had was during a joke about Claire's Accessories whilst a scene involving a birthing pool also raised a brief titter. Ultimately I was disappointed with a programme that felt like it had been severely watered down by ITV who seem to favour the sort of broad humour which The Delivery Man had in droves.

TV Review: The Delivery Man

ITV in Funny Sitcom Shock. That's the verdict on The Delivery Man, which hit the ground running last night.