TV review: I watched The Curse and The Puppet Master you don't have to — they're dire
The Puppet Master: Hunting the Ultimate Conman
Two shows I watched this week made me worry about my relationship with the telly.
(Channel 4, Sundays and All 4) and (Netflix) both came with glowing reviews online and in print. That’s usually good enough for me.
Except they were both dire in their own ways.
show has a good story at least. It’s a documentary about conman Robert Hendy-Freegard, told through the eyes of people who met him along the way. One is a gang of college friends from the 1990s who are persuaded to go on a road-trip with a man they know as Rob, who spins a story that he is an MI5 agent and they need to join him on the run from the IRA. The other group affected by Hendy-Freegard is a family whose mother starts a relationship with him.
It’s decent material that would have made a good hour of TV. We turned it off before end of the first episode (of three), because you could almost see the director going “could you say that a bit slower, we need to drag this out over three hours?”.
features a comedy super-group, uniting the creators of and . I’ve heard of these two comedies, but haven’t seen them, probably because I’m getting old. Judging by , I’m glad I’m not getting any younger.
It feels like a Guy Ritchie tribute hour, a remake of by comedians, without the laughs. The characters are straight out of ‘Make A Crime Caper Set in 1980s London’ kit. There is the Big Thick One, the Smiling Bully, the Wily Woman Behind it All, the Gentle Soul and The Eejit in The Hat, who keeps getting his hat tipped off by the Smiling Bully.
The only time I paid attention was to try and guess the 1980s hits playing on the radio. The rest of it dragged its way through a wafer-thin plot where four losers and two thugs try to rob 50 grand and end up with millions in gold bullion by mistake.
It lacks the humanity of Ricky Gervais in or Aisling Bea in . The dialogue is fast asleep compared to what you get from Sharon Horgan in . The foolishness, important in a comedy, is miles behind anything Brendan O’Carroll does in .
It’s one of the worst comedies I’ve ever seen. And still, the reviews are red hot. Twitter liked it too, except for some punter called @Gerundagula, who tweeted “#TheCurse is a bit shite then?” That’s an understatement.
The problem now is that it’s hard to know if a TV show is any good.
The awkward truth is that there is a lot more ‘bit shite’ than ‘really good’ on telly at the moment, as Netflix and co shovel content in our direction. I keep wishing they’d hurry on and release .
