This is one of those mildly amusing sit coms that everyone goes nuts for because it’s British. Okay, maybe that’s a little mean. But I feel like this premise (irascible shop owner and his friends) has been done before.
To be honest, it took me a really long time to warm up to this show. Maybe I wasn’t in the right mood. I do feel like it got funnier as it went on, even if the pattern of the jokes really didn’t change much.
Sit Coms are generally boring. This is better than many, but hardly one of the great ones.
6/10
- Genre: Sitcom, Dark comedy
- Created by Dylan Moran, Graham Linehan,
- Written by Dylan Moran, Kevin Cecil, Andy Riley, Graham Linehan, Arthur Mathews
- Starring:
- Dylan Moran as Bernard Black
- Bill Bailey as Manny Bianco
- Tamsin Greig as Frank Katzenjammer
- Martin Freeman as Manny’s doctor
- Rupert Vansittart as The tasteful customer
- David Cann as The roaring customer
- Kevin Eldon as The Cleaner
- Liam Hess as Jimbo
- Colin McFarlane as Detective
- Nick Frost as Alarm installer
- Peter Serafinowicz as Hywel Granger
- Tony Way as Fast food chain and cinema employee
- Omid Djalili as Trebor the photographer
- David Walliams as Customer
- Nina Conti as Kate, Bernard’s date
- Rose Keegan as Fran’s neighbour
- Johnny Vegas as Fran’s landlord
- Rob Brydon as B. Nugent
- Ricky Grover as Danny
- Big Mick as Gus
- Mark Donovan as Cousin Gregor
- Jessica Hynes as Eva, Fran’s Yoga partner
- Simon Pegg as Evan
- Olivia Colman as Tanya
- Lucy Davis as Becky
- Annette Crosbie as Manny’s mother ‘Moo-Ma’
- Sam Kelly as Manny’s father ‘Moo-Pa’
- Keith Allen as Dave the Lion
- Justin Edwards as Customer/Poker Player
- Mac McDonald as American Customer
- Craig Parkinson as Martin the Tout
- Emily Mortimer as Customer
- Julian Rhind-Tutt as Jason
- Composer: Jonathan Whitehead
- Country of origin: United Kingdom
- Original language: English
- No. of series: 3
- No. of episodes: 18
- Executive producer: William Burdett-Coutts
- Producers: Nira Park, Julian Meers
- Editors: Paul Machliss, Nick Ames
- Camera setup: Multiple
- Running time: 25 minutes
- Production company: Big Talk
- Distributor: Channel 4 Sales
- Original network: Channel 4
- Picture format: 576p SDTV
- Audio format: Dolby Digital Stereo
- Original release: 29 September 2000 – 15 April 2004