London Irish
Channel 4 Tues, 10pm
★ (out of five)
F*** me, is this s*** still going? It didn’t get cancelled after one week? Well I’ll be a c***.
Hey, how did you like the intro to my review? Was it hilarious. No? Huh? Well why don’t you just f*** yourself with your own p****, you c***ting, w***ing t***!
Oh … sorry. I was in London Irish mode there. I’ve just finished watching the second episode. It’s taking me a little while to adapt to the fact that, in the real world, curses are not necessarily punch lines. I’ll snap out of it now.
Yes, this dreadful comedy is still on the air. In fact, 1.1million people tuned in to the first episode. So, once you take away the curious and the masochistic, it’s clear there is a sizeable constituency who will watch anything, laugh at anything.
So, I don’t really know why I’m writing this review and why you’re reading it. We’d all be better rewarded for penning ‘edgy’ scripts and getting them shown on national television. If they will broadcast this, well, the bar is low and pretty much anybody can clear it.
The second episode is probably worse than the opener. Although that’s a marginal call, like trying to judge whether Alan Shearer or Martin Keown is the more bland football pundit.
The shock police get properly tested this week as jokes about terrorism (tick), paedophilia (tick), necrophilia (tick), Louis Walsh (tick) and rape (tick) are sent, barely dressed, down the runway to strut their stuff.
Though, as was case first time around, the only thing likely to make you splutter Barry’s tea at the screen is the horrific writing.
Example: Bronagh’s fella is about to get slagged off by Packie (friction, tension, jealousy – maybe they’ll end up together later in the series. That would be the clichéd thing to happen. Thankfully, I’ll never know if it comes to pass. Two episodes is my limit). This lad James is “Englishy” says Packie. Why? “He says ‘fun’”. “And ‘literally,’” adds Niamh. “Yeah, what is the craic with their inability to form a sentence without the word 'literally'?” asks Packie.
James has entered the pub by now and is about to join the gang. Surely, you think, he is not going to spout the word literally in the next few lines ... Or fun.
What do I know about comedy? Very little. But I do know that jokes are not supposed to be so stunningly obvious, so blatantly contrived, so mind-numbingly predictable.
No, he definitely won’t say literally straight away – there will be a pay-off later on in the show when we the audience have more or less forgotten about it.
Then in a matter of seconds ... James: “I had so much fun at the wedding. I mean, I literally had the best time.”
Oh no.
This was about a third of the way in. A load of other stuff happened after, but by then I had lost the resolve to pay attention.
I think Niamh got intimate with a cadaver. One of the lads decided they might be a homosexual, which turned out to be literally no fun at all in the end. Boom, boom sign me up! Bronagh rotted from the inside out, dissolving in a fizzling puddle of toxicity. Turns out she had battery-acid for blood. Aye, have ye got a problem with that ye f***in' p**** with ears?
No, well yes ... no actually. Just leave me alone. Please! I give up.
Somebody else can do a review next week. One of the 1.1 million might step up. Though as the curious get bored and the masochistic get bored too, you might see that number tail off.
If it doesn’t, well, you wouldn't know whether to laugh or cry. Might as well laugh, it'd be a first for this awful show.
