The Piglet Files

The premise of the series is that literally everyone is a total idiot: the protagonist, his colleagues, his bosses, his wife, the antagonists, the random people they encounter... They thought that somehow idiocy would translate into humour. It doesn't. You need jokes that work, you need characters that are compelling, and you need a plot. None of these episodes have a plot. Nothing ever happens. They just compete who can be the most incompetent and they do stupid things that the writers thought would be funny. But they are not. They are irritating. I hate every character in this series and every lame attempt at comedy. Imagine waiting three seasons to hear one proper punch line or one example of good line delivery and timing...

I recently picked up the first two series of this show on DVD. VERY funny. I really enjoyed it, although I had never heard of it and only bought it because it has Nicholas Lyndhurst (Only Fools and Horses, Butterflies) in it.

As untenable as the premise may sound, the show is usually very believable and sometimes takes a semi-serious turn like when Piglet's wife is kidnapped accidentally, but always pays off with a big laugh in the end.

Nicholas Lyndhurst is great as usual in this series, and his costar Clive Francis puts in a good performance as his boss, Drummond. But deserving special mention is Michael Percival as Dexter. They say playing stupid is hard. Well Mr. Percival does an excellent job making Dexter both amazingly stupid yet completely likable.

Highly recommended.

My whole family loves catching The Piglet Files on PBS on Saturday nights. It is so clever and funny.Piglet is the only one with any sort of intelligence. Everyone else just seems to be clueless. They bungle all of the assignments and Piglet (usually accidentally) cleans up the mess. (I still can't figure out how his wife doesn't know that he's an MI5 agent. Even though this takes place in Great Britian, I think Americans audiences can relate. Just change MI5 to CIA and you've got a hit show! I'm disappointed that they are not making new episodes. It seems that by the time we get good British shows here, they're already canceled in GB, which is too bad.

Nicholas Lyndhurst deserves better recognition for his contribution to British comedy.

This show isn't a patch on the great 'Only Fools', but don't get me wrong, it's warm and funny, and those things go a long way.

Well worth a look if you can find a copy on DVD.

This was always a great show but has rarely been repeated on British TV, this always seemed strange as Nicholas Lyndhurst is basically now a British institution!

It now looks like Paramount 2 on Sky will be showing it, so lets hope it'll finally get a DVD release (amazingly there is an NTSC version but as yet no PAL!!!).

If you ever get the chance to watch it make sure you do, this shows British spies aren't all James Bond (and came 10 years before Johnny English)

Kudos must all so go out to the actor who played Lewis, who only surpassed his performance of an utter buffoon in the film Love,Honor and Obey.