In these enlightened days of clear and prominently displayed health and safety signs, I think I should warn you about this programme right from the start: Danger! Comedy Free Zone!
Ben Elton used to be a bold,funny, intelligent, era-defining stand-up. He co-wrote Blackadder, one of the most finely crafted and hilarious sitcoms of his generation. He wrote books that became instant best-sellers.
So, who is the man behind "The Wright Way", and what the hell has he done with Ben Elton?
I didn't really like Gordon Brittas the first time around, and I like him even less in his apparent reincarnation as Gerald Wright, a stressed-out health and safety executive working at Baselricky Town Hall. But, like Shakespeare's comedies, every episode of The Brittas Empire had at least one laugh in it. The Wright Way has no laughs in it at all.
There's no room for subtlety in David Haig's performance at Gerald Wright. He shouts, he pulls funny faces, he puts on a silly voice. But whatever he does, Haig cannot alter the fact that the script is not even mildly amusing, and the underlying structure of the show is fatally flawed.
The setting feels hackneyed, the characters are badly thought out, thinly drawn, and utterly two dimensional.
There's a mayor who speaks only using backwards sentences. There's a man-eating, middle-aged Asian woman. There's a vaguely camp guy who looks a bit like Alan Carr, and another bloke who doesn't appear to possess any character traits at all, other than the handy ability to pick up any line of dialogue that Elton hasn't allocated to one of the others.
At home, there's Wright's daughter and her lesbian partner. Another box ticked for the right-on commissioning editors at the BBC, who probably spent more time deciding how many gay and ethnic characters there should be in the series than they did actually reading the script.
It all feels very lazy indeed – even the title of the show is indistinct and will be easily confused in the TV listings with The Wright Stuff on Channel 5.
Perhaps Mr. Elton should spend less time listening to pimply comedy executives and focus groups, and more time following his instincts and listening to the little voice in his head that used to tell him the right way to make people laugh. I'm reminded of the old adage that the camel was designed by committee.
Unfunny is too small a word for it. If anyone happens to find Ben Elton's Mojo, please be kind enough to put it in a jiffy bag and post it back to him immediately.
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