Piglets

I so wanted to like this. I'm a great fan of Mark Heap and Rebecca Humphries, and still regard Green Wing as an underrated masterpiece.

But, oh dear. The problem, as so often with comedies nowadays, is that it simply isn't funny because the material is so weak, lazy and uninspired.

Combine poorly written dialogue with an overabundance of second-rate actors and the result is an embarrassing mess. There's no other way of saying it.

I'm going to persevere because I refuse to believe that writers of this auspicious pedigree will not improve as the show progresses. But the signs are not good so far.

I was looking forward to seeing this show but after watching the first episode I was treated to a desperately unfunny collection of ridiculous characters, way over-acted and I just wanted them all to shut up. The worst being Superindent Fry played by the otherwise brilliant. Sarah Parish in ridiculous make up and disasterous dialogue. The talents of Mark Heap are left at the door as he more or less reprises his role of Jim from Friday Night Dinner who walked into Mr Benn's costume shop and came out as a policeman. The running story arc of the "plant" or "prune" is cringeworthy, as are the "piglets" themselves. I had hope for this given that Ricky Champ appears in every episode but he is just overplaying a parody trainer. I persevered to complete the series in the hope of raising a smile but sadly it was not to be. I gave the point for the brief explanations of the Spiderverse.

Well it's not good. All the cast are unlikable (which seems to be the current trend), and the "comedy" relies on awkward comic timing from the try-too-hard cast rather than (heaven forbid) some decent writing.

Even the title seemed to be controversial for the sake of it, almost a televisual form of click bait. It did it's job in that it got some headlines before the programme aired, but sadly the show is neither as challenging or boundary-pushing as it thinks it is.

None of the characters make any sense (the chief inspectors come across as simpletons, the recruits as morons) and I'm never sure who I'm actually meant to root for. Or maybe it's because I just didn't care.

It's obviously bloody awful. Frankly we all should demand better.

Itv isn't known for a lot of good comedy. It's not all Man About The House, Rising Damp, Only When I Laugh and this goes to show that Changing Ends is a modern exception (Viscous and The Job Lot were very good a few short years ago).

Quality actors like an unrecognisable Sarah Parish, Colin McFarlane and the usual Mark Heap are wasted here while Ricky Champ who played an inmate in a psychiatric hospital in Suspect on Channel 4 this week finds himself in another institution - an unfunny itv comedy.

Characters can take time to develop but, having bingewatched the first (and hopefully, only) series, I am no closer to liking the sexually-repressed characters that can't even supply their own catchphrase to look forward to with each episode.

Perhaps fewer characters might have given more laughs but an unfunny opening titles sequence with an unforgettable theme doesn't hold out for a good show ahead. The Thin Blue Line this isn't.

Many unfunny comedies use eye candy to hide from a poor script. Katherine Kelly in last year's equally bad Ruby Speaking springs to mind and Callie Cooke offers much the same here (Scorpio legs!) but Greeta is probably the most realistic of the recruits but she isn't funny either.

A lot of talented wasted by a group of fifth former writers it seems.

Well this one is really really scraping the barrel that a world champion barrel scraper had scraped till they couldn't scrape no more. Every single joke falls flat and misses the mark so much it's painful. It jammed full of unlikeable characters that for the most part you can't relate to them.

They throw every stereotype at you, filling the show with too many characters to give a decent story arc or much to do. The problem we have with some of modern sitcoms these days is the writer are to afraid to write something funny in case it offends someone. It's time for sitcoms to be funny once more.

To give you an idea of how unfunny this is, they have more laughs in an episode of Mrs Browns Boys.