The Persuasionists

How these brutal edits are ruining comedy

Studio warm-up comedian Richard Sandling rails against heavy-handed post-production techniques.

We shall dwell only briefly on the eighth circle of sitcom hell that is The Persuasionists. Set in an ad agency, it's creaking, lame, unfunny, arcane and stuffed with cardboard characters (the comedy Eastern European, the menacing Cockney). It made Big Top look like Curb Your Enthusiasm.

Last Night's Television

Some of the dialogue is awkwardly leveraged towards a punchline, and the characters will need a more time to bed down into the character predictability that is one element of a successful sitcom. But there's enough going on here, I would have thought, to persuade viewers that it might be worth sticking around long enough to allow that bedding down to take place.

'From the makers of The Inbetweeners!' trumpeted the press release. 'Written by the man renowned for the "slag of all snacks" campaign for Pot Noodle!' it continued in full big-sell mode. OK, so the second claim was a touch desperate, but there was still a sliver of optimism twitching in my remo-finger as I prepared to be persuaded by The Persuasionists (BBC2).

How wrong can you be? Despite gaining kudos for a title that sounded like it was dedicated to a cult 1960s harmony group who only ever recorded two tracks on an obscure Memphis label before imploding in a soul stew of drugs and sibling-related adultery, thus guaranteeing legendary status, The Persuasionists turned out to be as tasty as, well Pot Noodles - and cold ones, at that.

There were warning signs: Iain Lee, for one, here sporting a strange spray tan and spray-on hair and the same self-satisfied sneer that made him so irksome on The 11 O'Clock Show. Surely, though, he'd be balanced out by Adam of Adam & Joe fame and a script, by Jonathan Thake, that promised an insider's assault on the absurdities of advertising.

Well, no and no. 'Adam Buxton - what were you thinking?' was the note I wrote as his character Greg turned out to be as dripping with weary clichés as the rest of Thake's join-the-dots advertising idiots. Thake might have a killer way with advertising slogans but, on the evidence of The Persuasionists, he can't tell the difference between satire and stereotyping. The Persuasionists was rammed to its smug rafters with the latter.

Come to think of it, does advertising even need sending up? Such an easy target, and The Persuasionists, with its shouty Australians, dodgy foreigners with big pencils and smelly Cockney cheese gags, missed it by a country mile. Now watch it clean up at next year's Comedy Awards.

The Persuasionists review

The generous scheduling and a talented cast are sadly the only merits in what proved to be a stultifying, clichéd, unfunny clutter of misfiring jokes and strained characters.

Last Night's TV - The Persuasionists

I despair of a decent comedy ever coming out of BBC at the moment. The latest 'comedy' offering - and Trading Standards should take up the issue of false labelling - is The Persuationists, set in an advertising agency.

Squandering a good cast that includes Adam Buxton, Daisy Haggard and Simon Farnaby, this is an unreconstructed office-based sitcom set in the world of advertising. Fearsome, insane boss, check; dimbulb secretary, check; comedy foreigner, check . . . This relentlessly ticks all the wrong boxes as the talented cast struggle bravely against a script containing almost no funny jokes. Until recently this was called The Scum Also Rises, but presumably that title was axed for containing some humour and wit, therefore making it an ill fit for what follows. False advertising.

Considering the daftness of the advertising industry, it is surprising that it has inspired so few comedies. The Persuasionists, a six-part sitcom starring Jarred Christmas which starts tonight, redresses this balance. The ad world is peculiarly suited to comedy treatment, complete with outrageous personalities, facile themes, a frenetic pace and a limitless supply of colourful "visiting" personalities (to pep up each episode). In the series, which is written by Jonathan Thake (who used to work in an ad agency) and produced by the company responsible for The Inbetweeners, such outlandish characters are well represented: there's a sexual predator, a brainy loser, a neurotic female executive, a bullish boss and witless account director. The agency is called HHH&H, a wry reference to the vain habit among marketeers of forming their agencies' names around their initials. In tonight's episode, Greg (the witless one, played by Adam Buxton) must pitch a sub-standard campaign for brown, pungent "Cockney cheese" ("for empty nesters who like dairy products") to an antagonistic client Jim, played by Lee Ross. The presentation goes terribly and the team has to use cunning to win over the client, enlisting a female team member as a "honey trap". It all goes desperately wrong and concludes with a booze-stoked confrontation. It's light, sometimes entertaining, vacuous stuff - like the industry it depicts. Just try to ignore the overdone canned laughter.

The Beeb's latest sitcom is hewn from the same rock as The IT Crowd: it's big, bold, colourful and obvious. The setting this time is a hapless advertising agency - waters charted much better in the recent Martin Clunes remake of The Fall And Rise Of Reginald Perrin. Still, it might be a grower, in the same sledgehammer way that Miranda was - and fans of Iain Lee and Adam Buxton will appreciate their putting in an appearance.

Set in the world of advertising, this new sitcom has its own unique selling point: it's approximately one-third funny. The third succeeds because every time Simon Farnaby steps in as sex-crazed international fixer, Keaton, it's to do something hilarious with a big pencil. The rest fails because the other execs (Adam Buxton, Iain Lee, Jarred Christmas and Daisy Haggard) are something-and-nothing characters, and fail to add anything clever or convincing to the flabbier bits of the script. Nevertheless, there are some genuinely good ideas here, and the team's battle to put together a convincing campaign for a new product, cockney cheese, is leavened by the presence of guest star Lee Ross. He makes a marvellous cockney, possibly because until recently he played Denise's ex, Owen, in EastEnders.