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.

What I see when I watch this program is 2 middle aged men with no particular skills or ability who have probably failed at any attempts at any sort of career and have resorted to bottom of the barrel easy-to-write gags with no character based humour at all.

I probably sound like somebody who's 'no fun' for saying this, but when I think back to shows like The Extras, It's always sunny in Philadelphia and South Park I laugh.. When I think back to this show I'm going to think 'How sad..'.

The setup for this show comes in form of 10 second lines for each character which are sung in such a way as to make us think "oooh how random and fun!" - My understanding is that one of them owns a flat, the other one is just there for no reason - and Matt Berry (doing his usual character) turns up every so often.

If you've seen 'the extras' by Gervais and are familiar with 'when the whistle blows' - this exact show is more or less what they are making fun of... However I doubt they would have known back then just how bad a BBC sitcom could get!

Loved it. Think you need to watch it more than once though, as sometimes the surreal humour is a bit hit and miss first time round, and to the above reviewer Per 81 or something, Matt Berry has ALWAYS been funny, you've never watched the IT crowd thats why.

Loved Eric, bob's son, didn't realise he is actually Norwegian. Not sure about the sex mad neighbour, seems very odd, and whats with taking photos of men's crotches....'shudder'.

Vic and Bob back on form again, and so what, its shooting stars in sitcom style. Better than the unfunny Miranda and Mrs Browns boys.

Smells like lynx.

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.

I read through some of the less favorably reviews on here and feel they may not fully understand what the show is about.

Vic and Bob are never what they seem, and either is their humor. If people watched the recent Christmas Special, they will realize that House of Fools is not only a Sitcom, but a little bit of a parody on sitcoms.

I really enjoyed House of Fools because it really bough together a lot of elements and styles of comedian in a gorgeous 30minute time slot- I instantly fell in love with the characters, Vic and Bob are Vic and Bob, but a little less surreal and convey themselves more as people rather than slap stick comedy characters.

For fan's there are brief moments of nostalgia as Vic and Bob write in some of their more memorable lines from previous shows. I did show this to my partner who isn't from the UK and who has never seen Vic and Bob and really enjoyed a good 30minutes of fun that doesn't take itself too seriously.