House of Fools

Television sitcoms are often hi-jacked by secondary characters. Karen and Jack eventually took over Will and Grace. Penelope Keith stole The Good Life after a couple of series, and Lesley Joseph continues to shamelessly upstage Quirke & Robson in Birds of a Feather. But stealing the show from the stars doesn't usually happen as quickly as episode one.

Vic Reeves & Bob Mortimer's new sitcom House of Fools (BBC 2) is already Matt Berry's show. Right from day one. It's only funny when his character Beef is on, and when he's off screen we simply sit and wait for his next entrance.

I'd go as far as to say that his screen presence, comic timing and sheer, over-powering "Berry-ness" make the old troopers from Shooting Stars look a little like they're struggling to keep up, and Berry's casting in this supposed Vic & Bob vehicle makes the whole thing feel uncomfortably uneven and a little poorly judged.

Reeves and Mortimer are the masters of "loose". Their Big Night Out in the early nineties revolutionised light entertainment on British television, and the more under-rehearsed and shambolic it was, the funnier it got.

Unfortunately, sitcom is a much trickier creature to handle, needing far more pace and better drilled performances to successfully land its laughs.

Although seemingly chaotic and disorganised, The Young Ones (to which this will no doubt be compared) was a very tightly structured, well rehearsed, and brilliantly acted show. But with the best will in the world, Vic and Bob are simply not practised enough actors to deliver the breakneck pace that's needed by a primetime sitcom, recorded in front of a live studio audience.

You could have driven a bus between most of the lines of dialogue in this show, and the pair seemed to be concentrating so hard to get through it that there was no room at all for their usual trademark corpsing and ad-libbing.

Dan Skinner (Angelos Epithemiou from Shooting Stars) plays Vic's escaped convict brother Bosh and Morgana Robinson plays their randy neighbour Julie. Both do their best to lend a hand, but their dialogue is so hastily thrown together that neither has a hope in hell of making any real impact.

Luckily Vic and Bob have enough loyal fans for this total step in the wrong direction to go unnoticed, and as long as the boys have Mr Berry on board the series will no doubt continue to deliver big laughs.

Reeves and Mortimer also have enough friends in high places at the Beeb to be protected from the truth, and a second series has probably already been commissioned despite the glaring problems with this pilot.

I look forward to a brand new series of Shooting Stars, and the opportunity to see Vic and Bob firmly back in their comfort zone.

I have always been a fan of Vic&Bob's surreal stupidities, that work very well in a game show or sketch show setting. But as a situation comedy, it all becomes extremely embarrassing.

Berry and Skinner have never ever been funny, just cringe-worthy – and here they continue that tradition.

Worst of all is the audience, though. They laugh out load to every single word anyone utters, funny or not. How much beer were they served before the show – or is it all canned laughter? No comedy has sounded this fake since the seventies.

So, sorry guys – I will give this one a miss. Do us another season of Shooting stars instead, please!

Vic & Bob try their hand at a conventional studio sitcom for the first time and it's chock full of their particular brand of indulgent strangeness. There's a ghost of a farcical plot which holds each episode together but mostly it's weird tangents, odd riffs, bizarre chatter and surreal asides rather than an actual thing. It's a trifle awkward at times but the surrounding cast are game and the whole thing feels like a Shooting Stars riff spun out decadently into a whole other format. For non-fans it's probably inexplicable and off-putting but for devotees like myself this brief two-year thing is like bottled joy. Not to mention the effort V&B put in to spotlight character comedians they like throughout - with the set walls bedecked with Vic's paintings the whole thing feels (like everything they do ultimately) that it's something just for them that magically we get to see. Glorious.

Five minutes into the pilot episode I wasn't too sure if I would like this new sitcom from Reeves and Mortimer, but it soon had me laughing out loud and by the end I was left wanting more. It's typical Reeves and Mortimer humor and won't be to everyone's taste.

The supporting cast are all very funny characters. Julie, their sex hungry neighbor,played by Morgana Robinson is hilarious; I wouldn't object to living next door to her. I'm curious as to how others will receive this sitcom but If future episodes are as funny as the pilot episode I'm sure I'll end up watching the series more than once. Great stuff!!!

Only reason it gets as high as a 2 is because of the godly Matt Berry, otherwise its just unfunny chaos masquerading under the guise of surrealistic tv. Can't fathom what motivates the actors to assume what they're doing onscreen could somehow be considered even faintly amusing much less comedy.