COMEDY PLAYHOUSE: MISTER WINNER, BBC1, 10.35pm
LAST week’s offering from the Comedy Playhouse was so bad I’m still wincing at the memory. I’ve also gone ahead and watched next week’s which is similarly terrible, so what about tonight’s episode?
I can’t say. The BBC haven’t provided a preview copy. This makes my job harder but I’m also strangely grateful, as I was dreading having to watch it!
The Comedy Playhouse offers little 30 minute pilots which are jostling to get commissioned. None have impressed me so far but, in the absence of a preview copy, let’s approach this one with an open mind…
It’s a pilot sitcom about an accident-prone man, Mr Winner, and he sounds a bit like Mr Bean, always getting into comical scrapes and unusual situations.
That was funny when done by the rubber-faced genius of Rowan Atkinson. Can it be recreated here?
COLD FEET, STV, 9pm
OH dear, what is this? The first two minutes of this new series made the hairs on my arms stand on end. Was it relief, horror, or shock? I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, as Adam (James Nesbitt) rushes his pregnant girlfriend into hospital. Then the hospital horror breaks into a musical number and we learn she’s delivered a King Charles Spaniel. At least it’s an attention-grabbing way to open a new series.
So Adam is broody and wants a baby (or a puppy), but his partner Tina isn’t so keen, and his baby daydreams stop him staying focused when he has an interview with a hip young company whose office is filled with chutes, bean bags and treehouses.
And Karen is living the life of a glamorous businesswoman, attending a glittering book launch where she is launching, she hopes, literature’s next big thing.
It certainly seems more light-hearted than the last series. I just hope the musical sequence was a one-off.
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