Undercover

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Undercover
1 / 5

Series: One
Aired: 2015
Channel: Dave
Writers: Sacha Alexander, Andy Milligan and Mark Staheli
Cast: Daniel Rigby, Sarah Alexander, Sacha Alexander, Yasmine Akram, Brett Goldstein et al

"Family. It can be the most important thing in the world. And it can also be a massive pain in the arse."

This is Dave's first proper sitcom kind of comedy, as opposed to their non-plot driven comedy for comedy's sake like Ross Noble Freewheeling and Taskmaster (not counting Red Dwarf, which was taken from the BBC, or any of the others they've brought over) and it is, in short, pretty terrible, actually.

I had quite medium-height expectations for this one. As per usual, they added in the funniest moments to the preview ads and Dave actually have quite good taste when it comes to the other comedies they show, and their other non-sitcom or non-plot driven comedies have been extremely funny, so it was a plunge I was happy to take. Sadly, nothing ever really got off the ground. There was some good acting, from Sarah Alexander in particular, but the scripts and the severe lack of humour catapulted it in to the realms of the exceedingly dull. You could fast-forward almost five minutes of the programme beyond the adverts and you wouldn't really have missed much.

I'm also not hugely convinced that this Armenian family are actually even Armenian, but instead a facsimile of all the stereotypes and, yes, racial notions of an Eastern European country's immigrants. Whilst, obviously, factuality isn't a big turn on in comedy (or any kind of visual media these days) a sense of realism is what makes a comedy great and there was none of that here. I'm also convinced that nobody involved really knows what happens in an organised crime family, which I suppose is a good thing, but it was startling obvious and thus the humour was exaggerated to make up for it.

It just seemed like a comedy where some blokes got together in a pub and "had an idea for a comedy", which will probably sit well with their idea of what a Dave viewer is like: Top Gear obsessed reader of The Sun with a hankering for some "light-hearted" banter. There was also some small attempts at feminism, or at least not treating women like they did in the 16th Century, but that was basically just treating them like the did in the 70s. Five hundred years better, but still not quite cutting it.

I was, however, super happy to see Mark Heap again. He can do no wrong. Probably should've given this one a miss, though.