Catterick
The new Reeves and Mortimer (writers and stars) sitcom, on BBC3 at present, is for the most part as odd an affair as you’d guess. Lots of strange characters played by a great cast including Matt Lucas, Dennis Healey, Charlie Higson, Morwenna Banks, Mark Benton and whatever the name is of the young-looking one out of the League of Gentlemen (I can never remember which is which). Vic’s acting is still not up to much, a broader and clumsier approach than everyone else in the cast – but I sort of think they’ve given him a character for whom it kind of works, at least so far – but if any depth is expected from him as the show progresses, this might be a problem. The show starts out with a disturbingly sad air, a bunch of hopelessly lost people stumbling around without much of a clue, with the LoG guy giving a mood of undefined menace. Unfortunately, this eventually turns into that tired old extended-sitcome story frame, used again and again in crappy spin-off movies and still oddly popular in continuing comedy stories (see Grass for a first cousin), of our heroes getting accidentally in opposition to some dangerous criminals. I like to think that this pair might have something not entirely old and conventional in store for is, but the emergence of this hackneyed meme struck me as a rather disspiriting ending to this first episode.