LfcMotd73

I love Irish humour,I grew up around women and people like Mrs Brown here and am of an age where I am fond of dated old sitcoms and think men in drag who can be funny and men in drag who look a bit weird and spooky (Dick Emery, Hinge & Brackett)can be funny too but I found this really feckin' awful. The humour is there for sure, it's very well performed and has a really likable bunch of performers but it's too concentrated on being a cross between in-yer-face and quaint that it fails dreadfully on any laughs. I wanted to like it and I get the humour as it should appeal to me and my family background and my family anyway. I reckon my mum, my dad and sisters and some nephews and nieces will like it but my brothers and me and many friends won't like it. Oh HOW I tried.

It tries to tick all the boxes of the above and comes across like a bad Catherine Tate meets When The Whistle Blows (Gervais's sitcom within the sitcom in Extras).

It's a pity as it tried to be kind of new while being quite old fashioned and I think Brendan O'Carroll is enthusiastic enough and seems funny looking and minded. Maybe it could get better but it's just weird and unfunny.

I can't believe this had 4m viewers and nobody's come on to write something on here about it. Oh well, I'm the very first and I'm glad. This comic drama from Craig Cash and Phil Mealy was brilliant and I wish it had been a longer series. BBC do make good TV once in a while and this is definitely high up on the list. Bernard Hill and Steve Coogan are particularly brilliant in this but I really loved the kid playing little Joe. What a lovely little actor.# The chemistry between the boy and Bernard Hill playing his granddad was brilliant and lovely. And Coogan surprised me nicely with a very good dramatic performance. I love Coogan's comedy stuff- he's a legend but here he is really giving an acting turn. Sunshine has really stand out funny moments but it's really about the relationship between the 3 generations of Crosby men- George (Hill), Bing (Coogan) and Joe (young Dominic). It was so lovely to watch the relationship with George and his grandson and the chemistry was wonderful. It was incredibly moving towards the end. We knew it was leading up to sadness- I just felt it in my stomach it was going to be sad but I was surprised how moving it was. I was filling up with tears. It really was sad and so brilliantly performed. Lisa Millet deserves mention here too. I found she was so good in the role of Coogan's girlfriend and was a lovely, warm performance. The whole cast are good. Daniel Ryan, Craig Cash, Phil Mealey. This drama showed us about family love and the bonds between fathers and sons and never giving up and loss. Funny, heartbreaking and brilliant.

I caught this on More4 recently. I thought it was going to be a documentary but with the excellent Isaacs in it I knew it was going to be a good drama. But it's done in documentary style and your whole interest lies on whether you want to see JI doing a series of vignettes to camera. He plays a former violent psycho who has tried to amend his ways and Leo Regan films his confessionals in a set of one-on-ones. If you are not a fan of the actor it's best to stay clear but it is a brilliant study in working class, violent,drink and drug macho ism and what makes a man like him tick. I know guys like him honestly and I grew up in areas like his. He's the sort of guy you don't mess with in a pub. His speech patterns and ideals are exactly like many blokes I've known. Isaacs is truly menacing and absorbing at one and the same time. Great piece of work from a great actor working back home for a change.