Rosie Perez should be on TV a lot more, Jack Whitehall should be on TV a lot less. So where does that leave us when it comes to Bounty Hunters, the new Sky1 comedy-drama that co-stars this unlikely pair? Whitehall (who co-wrote the script with his Bad Education collaborator, Freddy Syborn) stars as Barnaby Walker, a PhD student from Wimbledon who, in common with all Whitehall characters, leads a pleasantly posh existence until disaster strikes. When his dad (Robert Lindsay) is rendered comatose by a mysterious fall, Barnaby must assume responsibility not only for the family’s antiques-dealing business, but also for a pair of statues looted from Syria and a £50,000 hole in the shop’s accounts.
Apparently, Wimbledon wimps benefit from nothing so much as the firm guidance of a tough Brooklynite, which is where Nina (Perez) comes in. Barnaby’s sister Leah (Charity Wakefield) crossed paths with Nina while backpacking, and the two bonded and stayed in touch – this might just be the single most implausible detail in an already coincidence-crammed plot. Still, Nina has reasons of her own for wanting to escape NYC, so she agrees to help the Walker siblings track down the missing cash and the rent-a-ruffian who made off with it.
Bounty Hunters is good on the neuroses of the English upper-middle-class male. Barnaby’s ringtone is The Archers theme tune, for instance, and he has a flighty, floaty-fabrics-wearing mum who calls everyone “darling”. Barnaby’s mum is a lot like the mum in Channel 4’s Back, in fact; these women are fast becoming a Brit-com trope.
What Bounty Hunters is not so good at is authentically depicting any other type of human. The criminals all come off like Danny Dyer misremembering scenes from The Lavender Hill Mob, while the detectives’ characterisation is only ever trench-coat deep. Perez often makes her lines work, but only by bringing the same furious conviction that she once used to dance the running man in Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing. The rest of Nina’s Nuyorican clan seem to struggle with a silly script, and it doesn’t help that the actor playing her mum is only eight years older. Perez looks great for her age – or any age – but come on.
More concerning still is the show’s positioning within TV’s most used and abused genre. How many “comedy-dramas” do you suppose start out as a straightforward comedy and then get reclassified once the commissioners cotton on to the lack of laughs? That’s the kind of unworthy thought that crosses a viewer’s mind when Whitehall is on TV that teensy bit too much.
No such trouble in Man Down (Channel 4), which is on series four already and still packing in the gags and the grotesques. Like Bounty Hunters, this sitcom is built around the comic persona of its creator-star, sarcastic ex-teacher Greg Davies. Only this man is kept down not merely by his own nincompoopery, but by the collective efforts of a support cast.
This episode features a cameo from Trevor Nelson; the woman in the cafe using a fry-up to educate Dan on the horrors of childbirth (harrowing yet unerringly accurate); and Mr Crumbs, a dungarees-clad giant who lives in lost property storage. As Jo says to a horrified Brian, by way of introduction: “He’s one of my best friends! He once held his breath for an hour!” All these characters, however incidental, are fully realised and often gifted with the best (read: filthiest) lines.
Each one has more kooky charisma than the entire cast of The Inhumans (Sky1) combined. This should probably be viewed as a mercy on Marvel’s part. Just when the responsibility of keeping up with an entire cinematic universe begins to overwhelm, they put out an eminently missable addition.
The plot concerns palace intrigue among the royal family of a genetically enhanced, moon-dwelling race. They live in an all-concrete building, which would be considered fairly restrained by Grand Designs standards, and dress in the kind of Lycra get-ups that may once have looked futuristic, but is now just athleisure. As for what those genetic enhancements consist of, it’s hard to say exactly. Gorgon has hooves for feet, Crystal has a black pattern stencilled on her blond hair and Karnak has some natty face tattoos, but these are not so much superpowers as fun, cosmetic treats you can buy at Claire’s Accessories for less than a fiver. Mr Crumbs puts them all to shame.
