The Royal Bodyguard

David Jason returns to BBC sitcom land where he has had great success in the past.

He plays Captain Guy Hubble; an ex-guardsman who becomes the Head of Security at the Buckingham Palace car park.

He then gets promoted as the Royal Bodyguard after somehow saving the Queen's life at the State Opening of Parliament.

Geoffrey Whitehead is Colonel Dennis Whittington; Hubble's hapless boss. He knows that Hubble is useless but is unable to fire him because Hubble somehow manages to please the Queen.

You can immediately guess that Jason plays a cross between Johnny English and Inspector Clouseau with Whittington essentially being Inspector Dreyfus.

At 71 years of age, Jason is rather too old to play such a role and looks it especially as is makes demands on him physically.

It also did not help that the sitcom is so lame, predictable and lacks an ounce of originality. You know where they got their inspiration from and Jason is miscast.

Sir David Jason returns to comedy in this new role. After becoming such a huge icon through shows such as Open All Hours, A Touch Of Frost and Only Fools And Horses anything new he did was always going to pail in comparison but I don't think The Royal Bodyguard is as bad as people claim it to be.

It's very much on David Jason's head and much of it's humour derives from physical comedy. People will say that this is old fashioned but lots of people still enjoy things like Laurel and Hardy which is the same sort of thing.

It's refreshing that there are no sexual references or swearing and the BBC needs more of this.

The scripts waver from being good to lousy but there are enough good points to keep watching however you can't help but think that the bumbling fool in authority joke has been done better with Clouseau and Johnny English.

The guys behind this dog's dinner also created The Worst Week of my Life, which was absolutely brilliant. Well written, well acted and very, very funny.

How then is it possible for them to come up with this absolute mess? The Royal Bodyguard is so bad that it defies description. Remembering David Jason's excellent performances in Open all Hours, The Darling Buds of May, Only Fools and Horses and A Touch of Frost, just to name a few, this is totally inexplicable. Why did he say yes to this? He must have made a quid or two over the years, enough to be able to turn down such a stinker.

Avoid this like the plague!

Watching David Jason on The One Show recently, he was congratulated on his ability to spot a great script; one that produced a character the British public would take to their hearts such as Del Boy, Granville, Pop Larkin, Frost and the like. When asked if The Royal Bodyguard would follow suit he seemed almost embarrassed and gave a rather mumbling response inferring that he hoped so.

Clearly he knew what has become clear to all after just two episodes. This is quite possibly the lamest, least funny, most predictable and generally cringe-worthy "comedy" i have ever had the misfortune to suffer. The first episode was dire. More out of curiosity than anything else we gave the second episode a viewing; if anything it was even worse than the first. The thought of another four episodes is sheer purgatory and they will be avoided at all costs.

It is so very sad that one of our most cherished and respected actors in the fields of both comedy and drama finds himself as the central figure in such banal rubbish. I sincerely hope that he finds another, more suitable vehicle to banish all memories of The Royal Bodyguard to the scrapheap...............and soon. It would be a terrible shame for this shambles to to be remembered as his final offering.

The oft repeated Fools and Horses episodes never looked so good. Mind you, On The Buses looks good compared to this tripe!

David Jason is a hugely talented comic actor. Why, then, are the BBC demeaning him by giving him such a catastrophically idiotic, derivative and mirth-free script as "The Royal Bodyguard"? And who on earth gave this pathetic dross the go-ahead? This is real car-crash television: you can see the 'jokes' coming light years away. Throughout a conversation with a pianist at a grand piano, we all know David Jason's character will somehow mistakenly knock the piano cover closed. The lead-up to this century-old comedy non-starter is excruciating, though when it finally happens, it's still amazing just how limp the payoff is.

Other 'highlights': he tries to eat a lobster but doesn't know how! He tries to attack a suit of armour!! He falls into some water!!! Ahahahaha haha hahahahaha!!!!! I could understand better if this mess was a one-off special for Boxing Day, when people are generally too drunk to get up and turn the telly off - but there's a whole series of "The Royal Bodyguard" on its way.... good grief! In conclusion: unbelievably pathetic, and a hugely embarrassing failure. If a 6-year-old had written this script for a school project, it would be returned with a red line through it. An insult to the abilities of David Jason and an insult to the viewer.