Among the criticisms rightly levelled at the BBC are that its commissioning editors are overcautious, unimaginative, unadventurous and over-reliant on star names and proven formulae.
So I really didn’t have much hope for The Wrong Mans (BBC2, Tuesday), the latest vehicle for the painfully ubiquitous James Corden. Since Gavin & Stacey — which I know we’re all supposed to have cherished beyond measure — Corden has become as inescapable a part of the BBC furniture as David Jason was in the Eighties, or Robson & Jerome were in the Nineties. If Corden had pitched a script based on the Albanian telephone directory, I’m sure the BBC would have commissioned it like a shot. As indeed they did when Corden proffered something nearly as ominous: a comedy thriller set in and around Bracknell.
Bracknell? Oh dear. Wasn’t the so-dull-it’s-funny theme done to death when Ricky Gervais set The Office in Slough? Comedy thriller? That’s even worse.
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