High & Dry

I'm a big fan of La La Land, Marc's previous show for Showtime and My New Best Friend which like High and Dry was also for Channel 4 so was really looking forward to this and it didn't disappoint. Great opening and characters - my stand out so far is Asim Chaudhry but also loving Harry Peacock's (Toast) performance so far. It's early days but I've already been shocked by Asim's character, bewildered at Brett's behaviour and most of all amused at the one-liners and slapstick by Wootton - really looking forward to episode 2 and seeing how it all pans out and develops

This review is about the 2018 re-imagining, not the original 2015 idea, which was actually better than the Wrecked idea: Lost seems to be what this show is based upon just like Wrecked is. I'm also sure Survivor and all the reality shows find homes in the basis as well. After all the comparisons and tributes are quoted, this show is as annoying as the "most annoying sound in the world" from Dumb and Dumber. Just because you can throw feces on a canvas and call it art, doesn't mean everyone should reward the behavior (unless you want all art to be that). I can't find the fifth episode yet, as I was trying to give the show the benefit of the doubt or suspending my disbelief, so I'm thinking even the production company gave up before a full season was completed. There were no standout characterizations as the main character overpowered the senses, and that is not a compliment (owing to the fact that the character was a worn out stereotype of the worst sort and not endearing to anyone or humorous in any way. The only way I would have found value to it was to see him die in the third episode with a powerful plotline twist).

A mirthless sitcom with idiot characters and desperate plot-lines is hardly news. But I am mildly surprised that Channel 4 would commission a deeply homophobic schlock comedy that has the unenlightened sensibilities of a 1960s Carry On film or a lowbrow 1970s sitcom. In High and Dry Marc Wootton plays Brett, an airline "trolly dolly" who could have been a friend of Mr Humphries in Are You Being Served? or one of Dick Emery's cast of stereotypical characters. He's insufferably camp in that too-gay-to-function way that almost no real life person could be. But, worse, there is an underlying pathology to Brett that betrays the homophobia in both the writing and the performance. Brett is the very embodiment of the predatory homo - the kind of pervert we were once warned about - and half the jokes revolve around him trying to seduce straight Douglas and ward off any attempts to interfere with the fantasy of Brett making the island on which they are stranded a paradise for two. Which points to the second strand of homophobia: Brett is not just comedy-crazy, he is psychopathic. Textbook definition psychopathic, actually. And since Brett pretty much drives the action, the nastiness that generates suffuses almost every scene and plot point, to the point where the whole show is one stinking pile of offensive dreck. Best avoided. The two stars are for Vicki Pepperdine, who is talented and has my sympathy.

Loving this show. More surprisingly my wife also loves it so it's doing something right. It has a fantastic cameo in episode five and there is also a great pay off from episode four with a significant plot twist that in hindsight I should have seen coming. I really like the series as its a collection of flawed characters each jostling for their place in any entirely impossible environment. I honestly don't recognize the negative reviews? The show Wrecked never aired in the UK so cannot comment on which is the best desert island show, but its not a unique concept, Swiss Army Man, Cast Away, Lost all the way back to Robinson Crusoe. FWIW Marc Wootton also created a show called La La Land about people trying to make it in LA but add singing + love and the movie version is not called a copied concept. Brett is meant to be laughed at because of the tropes as much as the lines his delivers, he is not meant to be an actual representation of a realistic gay person anymore than Harriet a realistic head teacher, or Susan an actual religious person, they are funny fictional characters brought to life for our entertainment, and entertain me they did!

Q. What do you do when you are writing a comedy but can't think of any actual jokes or humourous bits?

A.Make characters so ineffably stupid and vapid that their every word and action make you laugh at them, not with them.

I've watched most of the first episode of this 'idiots stranded on an island' comedy and I really dont mind if they all die on that island, humanity would be better off. There seems to be no centre of normality around which the farcical activities can occur, no anchored observer, just.. idiots being .. idiots..

The writer/main actor, Marc Wooton seems to have some experience in writing but it just doesnt seem to show here.

I get that farcical characters means people acting in over the top in farcical ways, but this just takes it to the limit and leaves us with no character to align with. Imagine Fawlty Towers where EVERYONE was as bad as Basil. Or that the reason that Blackadder 2-4 was better than Blackadder 1 was because Edmund himself became the island of sanity surrounded by a sea of morons.

Not this show, its Morons all the way down.

Marc Wooton plays the most ridiculous campiest flight attendant this side of Dick Emery sketch. Harry Peacock is his romantic foil or something. Vikki Pepperdine does her Appallingly Rude Middle Age Harridan schtick, again. And the rest are also morons but have yet to develop their full moronity.

If you secretly browse IMDB.. please put some actually comedy in your next show, don't use this ultimately lazy path.