Feel the Force

From the opening credit sequence, sung by the two female leads I think (Doon MacKichan, incidentally, is so far nowhere to be seen) this first episode of new Scottish sit-com "Feel the Force" was awful in every way. The two leads have the comic subtly and timing of a fatal school bus crash - and the script is full of bland, grey non-jokes performed with mugging repetitiveness (and two vaguely funny ones in the whole half hour; although the Chinese Madonna gag was driven into the ground and then stamped on until dead). There's no plot, or characters, and the only thing of real interest in the whole show was: HOW DOES AN ORDINARY POLICE OFFICER MANAGE TO AFFORD A FLAT IN EDINBURGH NEW TOWN? Really, this is bad. Scotland, hang our comic heads in shame. With England constantly churning out fine sit-coms and comics, BBC Wales riding high on the back of Russell T Davis, and the Irish geniuses of Linehan and Matthew still casting a long shadow over TV comedy in general - why is Scotland still trying to rewrite old "Naked Video" scripts? With a few exceptions (some, but by no means all, of the work of the Scotch & Wry and Chewing the Fat mafias) we never seem to be able to make people laugh. Rikki Fulton relied upon old Two Ronnies scripts, and Scotland's only true comic genius, Armando Iannucci, left after 18 months of making cups of tea for other people as a trainee at Radio Scotland.

Since the year 2000 we've had 'Caledonian MacBrains', 'The Karen Dunbar Show', 'Overnite Express', 'Meet the Magoons', 'Snoddy' (another police sit-com) and about eighteen thousand episodes of 'Still Game' (or 'Still Going, Oh Christ, When Will We Stop?' as it will soon be called). None of these have ever shook the world like Ricky Gervaise, Simon Pegg, or even Peter Kay (he's relatively crap now, but still better than Ford Kiernan - can't we sent a raiding party down to Bolton and steal him as a true Scot?) One day, we should have a sit-com to rank alongside 'Fawlty Towers' or 'Hancock'. And if you think that's unlikely, or we'll only ever appeal to people within 30 miles of the Clyde - ask yourself ... why?

I came across this by chance after watching The Book Group which also stars Michelle Gomez. Its obvious this has a few haters but I gave it a chance, simply because Michelle hasnt ever been in anything bad I've seen so far. She plays mental like no other woman, Green Wing is probably her most well known role.

So whats the issue? Well it seems that the fact this is women in the key roles thats the problem for some. Some guys simply refuse to engage with funny women. I would bet that had the central characters been played by guys they would have no issue with it. You also cant fault the writing, just look at her credits which include Veep, Succession and The Thick Of It. Sorry but the standard here is very high.

It would be interesting to see what the same people who rated this low thought of Smack The Pony.

I gave it a chance and I am currently binge watching it on Youtube.

Its funny as long as you can cope with women being funny. Which is obviously too much for some....

Being a police cadet in the uk, I'm into a lot of law programs and comedies, but this one, wow what can i say, its absolutely awful I've never seen anything as bad! The only part of this comedy which would make you laugh is the fact that it is not funny at all. It has bad acting (no offence to the actors because its probably the scripts fault), a terrible dialogue, and probably everything else about it is bad too.

To be honest i really cant believe that it hasn't already been removed from BBC2. It must be on for at least half an hour so people who have nothing else to watch on terrestrial television must have to put up with this terrible program. I'm not being awful to the writers of this program, all I'm saying is that they should consider removing it or forgetting about it and working on something new.

The Thin Blue Line was a great police comedy, it was absolutely hilarious! but Feel The Force is no where near as good as it for hundreds of reasons. I know that the writers didn't want to copy The Thin Blue Line in any way or get ideas from it, but Feel The Force sure is one terrible police comedy and i do not recommend it to anyone.

Although this comedy is really bad, rather than giving it 1 out of 10 i am going to give it 2 out of 10 instead because some parts of it actually make me laugh (although very little and only about two parts per episode), and it is not as bad as you would think because once you get used to it you can actually stand it (although with great difficulty).

Other than all that this is one comedy not to be watched by anyone who has a good sense of humour due to its bad qualities but if you don't have digital and nothing else is on television when Feel The Force comes on, id suggest watching it to see how bad it really is so that you can see for yourself.

What's everyone's problem with this? Why should silly scattershot humour without an 'ironic' or 'post-modern' or 'adult' twist suddenly be so taboo? Some of the comments about it misrepresenting the police force etc are just pathetic. It's obvious 2 minutes into any episode that the show is meant to be far removed from reality and is more in the slapstick visual tradition of silent film and the absurdist bungling comedy partnerships such as Laurel & Hardy, Abbot & Costello etc.

Yes it is definitely hit and miss. But it makes such a change to be able to watch a sitcom which looks good visually, is not studio-bound, without canned laughter, and without all the horrible anodyne PC humour of BBC1 comedies or the 'ironic' hipness of Channel 4 (ie swearing, vulgarity, pointlessly random hand-held camera-work and flashy editing).

Saw two episodes of this show on BBCA and really laughed! It's a pity that they aren't showing it any longer. The two police ladies getting fired and having to wear signs to advertise for a golf shop while trying to persuade a guy against committing suicide...it was hilarious! I'm surprised to see such distaste for this program by other reviewers. Maybe we watched different episodes. I'm hoping they'll release it on DVD so we can see more episodes. I actually enjoyed it far more than other British comedy I've seen (Are you being served and Keeping up appearances, for example).

The only other British shows I bother to watch are Hustle and Midsomer Murders. Anyway, I'd recommend giving it a chance and making up your mind instead of following reviews. I just hated to see this show get such awful reviews when my opinion is that it was worth watching.