Swiss Toni continues to run his car salesroom with his small staff consisting of his receptionist, a junior salesman (Paul) and a drunken senior salesman Geoff. While selling cars may well be like `making love to a beautiful woman' Toni's life is not all roses.
The Fast Show is well loved for it's many, hilarious characters. Everyone has their favourite but many people enjoy the dirty, hilarious monologues of Swiss Toni and his ascertains that anything is `like making love to a beautiful woman'. The decision was taken to give this character his own series and it never sounded like it would work. While other characters have been given extended sketches or one-off specials and worked, this tried for a big extension and, in my opinion failed.
Toni is an one-joke character, true, it's a funny joke but it can't carry a 25 minute show. To try and hold it together other characters are brought in, but they don't manage to be of any consequence whatsoever. The jokes are pretty bland and pretty unimaginative. When Toni does his catch phrase you can't help but laugh - but mostly out of relief than anything else. The plots of the episodes I have seen (I gave up eventually) were quite dull and you could see the jokes that were being set up, miles before they were delivered.
Higson does the character well, but it is clear that he doesn't work well with the need to find a `character' within Toni and not just deliver a sketch. It isn't his fault but there is a great difference between a character that works well in a sketch and one that a series can be built around it. Day and Thomas are both good people but they don't have much to work with and it was clearly hoped that just surrounding Higson with other talent would fill the gaps - it doesn't.
Overall fans will want to avoid the series simply because it ruins the memories of the great sketches. The series is unimaginative and relies on a generous canned laughter track to make it feel funnier than it is. Shame that they couldn't just leave the Fast Show behind and move on - it only succeeds to spoil the character of Swiss Toni and make you want to go and search out the sketches instead.
