Piglets

Could've been great if it had been written by someone who understood the job of police and could wrote something funny. Unfortunately, this is just amateur, stereotypical drivel that might appease certain demographics, but unlikely to appeal broadly. The jokes are flat, the acting is embarrassing and comedy is just not funny. Such a wasted opportunity to do something new Even Police Academy is funnier than this and I mean the last, really bad one. The best thing that could happen to this show is it quietly moved to the small hours of the morning and dropped slowly so the memory of even having laid eyes on it can be attributed to some kind of fever dream.

A lot of the reviews are making me laugh at how ridiculous they are! Hey, maybe humour has changed that much in the past few decades, and I've just not cared enough to pay attention

There is a mix of Green Wing, Friday Night Dinner, The Young Offenders, The Thin Blue Line, and a number of other comedy dramas in the kind of humour Piglets employs

It is funny in a silly, obvious way, with exaggerated characters and traits, and a story that is more about the relationships between them all rather than supporting a particularly strong message or overarching plot

I enjoyed it for its levity, warmth and ease of viewing, and it did make me laugh.

Well it's not good. All the cast are unlikable (which seems to be the current trend), and the "comedy" relies on awkward comic timing from the try-too-hard cast rather than (heaven forbid) some decent writing.

Even the title seemed to be controversial for the sake of it, almost a televisual form of click bait. It did it's job in that it got some headlines before the programme aired, but sadly the show is neither as challenging or boundary-pushing as it thinks it is.

None of the characters make any sense (the chief inspectors come across as simpletons, the recruits as morons) and I'm never sure who I'm actually meant to root for. Or maybe it's because I just didn't care.

It's obviously bloody awful. Frankly we all should demand better.

I was looking forward to seeing this show but after watching the first episode I was treated to a desperately unfunny collection of ridiculous characters, way over-acted and I just wanted them all to shut up. The worst being Superindent Fry played by the otherwise brilliant. Sarah Parish in ridiculous make up and disasterous dialogue. The talents of Mark Heap are left at the door as he more or less reprises his role of Jim from Friday Night Dinner who walked into Mr Benn's costume shop and came out as a policeman. The running story arc of the "plant" or "prune" is cringeworthy, as are the "piglets" themselves. I had hope for this given that Ricky Champ appears in every episode but he is just overplaying a parody trainer. I persevered to complete the series in the hope of raising a smile but sadly it was not to be. I gave the point for the brief explanations of the Spiderverse.

I so wanted to like this. I'm a great fan of Mark Heap and Rebecca Humphries, and still regard Green Wing as an underrated masterpiece.

But, oh dear. The problem, as so often with comedies nowadays, is that it simply isn't funny because the material is so weak, lazy and uninspired.

Combine poorly written dialogue with an overabundance of second-rate actors and the result is an embarrassing mess. There's no other way of saying it.

I'm going to persevere because I refuse to believe that writers of this auspicious pedigree will not improve as the show progresses. But the signs are not good so far.