The First Team

First 2 episodes are utter drivel, but gets better and funnier. Last episode takes a turn for the weird though. Would watch if they make a second season.

Cannot understand all the people giving this a 1/10. Is it as good as the inbetweeners? Of course not! This has some real funny bits, good characters and based around football. What more is there to like?

While the first team may have been billed off as a premiership division team, their players did not come off as responsible premiership soccer based players. Something I would like to believe the directors went for when taking into account the petulant behaviour of soccer players in the 21st century. The training base appeared to be a soccer training base found on the Welsh border and Wrexham but I might be mistaken. The show was well directed and the acting was good, especially from the older heads, but it was just very enjoyable from the soccer aspect of things. It just appeared to miss that spark. An amicable effort however.

Very good sitcom, really enjoyed, would love to see a second series of this, funny in most places, would recommend

The BBC's glossy new football sitcom from the scatalogical mind of the In-Betweeners is what you might expect. Crammed full of psychotic characters, cringeworthy awkward moments and unexpectedly bleak crevices.

It's not reinventing any wheels but by largely sticking with the three solid leads (earnest optimistic Mattie, doleful overwhelmed Jack and vain manchild Benji) it proves strangely compelling. Although with that focus you sacrifice more time with some of the rest of the cast who become somewhat abstract caricatures. Will Arnett, in particular, just seems oddly pointless here and most of the big plot beats of the series just drift past without leaving much impact. None of three have any stake in them, particularly.

I'm no football fan, but there were some interesting points within about the fan-club relationship and frankly very little actual football beyond that. Dotted throughout the six episodes you also get some excellent cameos - from interesting character comedians like Phil Wang and Tom Bell to actual Jason Williamson off of Sleaford Mods.

In its rush to both be an embarrassing character comedy and a comment on contemporary professional football, it does neither particularly well and therefore will likely never enter the premier league of decent sitcoms. It does retain a wonky charm in its three earnest leads, if it goes into extra time le'ts hope we get more of them.