Trigger Point is the best British sitcom currently on TV, no contest – here’s why
THE best British sitcom currently on TV?
No contest. It’s Trigger Point, where we follow the knockabout antics of Vicky McClure’s Lana Washington and the Met’s hapless EXPO bomb disposal unit as they detonate their way across London, leaving mayhem, death and laughter in their path.
And, no, technically it’s not actually a comedy, it’s a very po-faced drama.
I owe it a grudging apology, though.
For, last week, I suggested the Trigger Point dialogue had only one way of signalling disaster, the so-called “Oh s**t” BOOM! method.
However, I’m now forced to admit that it’s actually got two others.
When really vexed, Lana will also shout “GET BACK! GET BACK!” just before another fatal explosion, but when she’s trying to calm down some poor sod who’s strapped to a bomb she’ll urgently tell them, “You need to stay still”, right up until the point they don’t stay still and blow themselves to smithereens.
Before Sunday night’s episode, of course, viewers were also meant to be scratching their heads over the identity of the terrorist group who were causing all this mayhem and playing along with the script’s pretence that it could be “Islamists”, even though everyone, including ITV, knew the network would never have the balls to do something so realistic.
This week we learned The Wave, as it’s known, is in fact a group of kill-the-rich crazies who the writer, Daniel Brierley, can’t quite bring himself to describe as far-Left, presumably because, while he doesn’t approve of their methods, he’s vaguely sympathetic to their anti-capitalist agenda.
The point is, though, they’re not the scary ones.
The group who instil terror in me are the fantastically inept EXPO team with their “easy come, easy go” attitude to colleagues’ deaths and divided loyalties, which have split these clowns into two groups.
On one side you’ve got narky, ham-fisted Lana and a couple of acolytes.
On the other, you’ve got the white blokes who are all gormless imbeciles, of course.
Most gormless of the lot, inevitably, is the unit’s new commander John Francis, who announced his arrival by shouting “SIT REP?” after their first disaster, then did it again after the second and kept shouting it so often I got a fit of the giggles when he did it for a fifth time.
The laughter helps ease the pain of watching Trigger Point, if I’m honest.
The thing that really cheers this process along, though, is the slapstick way the show kills off its most annoying characters.
Nothing, I thought, could be funnier than the way Lana’s pain-in-the-ar*e brother, Billy, blew himself up in a car, during series one, but they actually managed it, this week, when one of the terrorists, who’d appeared from nowhere dressed as a firefighter, invited Wash’s love interest DCI Thom Youngblood to look down a lift shaft, then shoved him down it when the stupid berk obliged.
For those who don’t have ITVX, I should also warn you it gets even funnier in episode four when they start blowing up City workers on e-scooters, at which point I was so beside myself with glee that I was ready to join The Wave and declare this show to be beyond parody.
It’s not, though. It’s perfect for parody.
The trouble with British TV, as Black Ops demonstrated, is that it’s no longer got the talent or will to make a decent one.
All it’s got are a lot of dramas that are unintentionally hilarious and a lot of comedies that are about as funny as a child-trafficking documentary.
American TV probably isn’t as consistently brilliant as some people would have you believe but, by stark contrast, it has created something that’s beyond British TV at the moment.
A sitcom that’s actually funny — Curb Your Enthusiasm (Sky Comedy, Monday, 9pm).
Enders’ cr*ppy medium
THE latest futile attempt to get a laugh out of EastEnders was provided by a new character called Madame Tellerina, who works as a travelling psychic medium.
The very last thing they need in Walford, given they’re already overrun by the living dead (Cindy, Kathy), message-bearing ghosts (Pat, Roxie, Keanu), and those who hover somewhere in between, like Reiss’s wife Debbie, who’s been in a persistent vegetative state almost as long as the show’s ratings.
The purpose of Mme Tellerina’s visit to The Queen Vic was, I suppose, to try and add a light touch to the latest murder plot, involving the so-called “six”, which she did by telling Denise: “Someone is buried underground, they’re trying to reach out to you.”
A startling nugget that could’ve been a reference to Keanu, who’s buried under the cafe, or Tina, who was buried under the Argee Bhajee, or Owen Turner, who was buried under the gardens, but turned out to be a reference to one of the Square’s pets, which vanish into thin air, whether they’re the size of Dennis Jnr’s tarantula Marilyn or the Millers’ Irish wolfhound Genghis.
Elsewhere, on a not entirely unrelated note, cancer-stricken Alfie has just become the latest character to wet himself in The Queen Vic, following in the soggy footsteps of Linda, Ben and Jack. Why the Beeb soap is so weirdly obsessed with incontinence, I have not the slightest idea.
However, this recurring sub-plot remains the first and only piece of evidence ever to suggest EastEnders will make you p**s yourself.
QUIZ show answer of the week. Tipping Point, Ben Shephard: “In 2021, which Argentinian footballer won the Ballon d’Or for a seventh time?”
Alyson: “Madonna.”
Bzzzz. Incorrect.
It was in fact Lionel Richie.
Unexpected morons in the bagging area
CELEBRITY Mastermind, Clive Myrie: “Flushing Meadows is the home of which Grand Slam tennis tournament?”
Lauren Hayfield: “Wimbledon.”
Clive Myrie: “As a child, in 1035, the French nobleman who later became known as William the Conqueror inherited the title Duke of where?”
Lauren Hayfield: “Birmingham.”
Tipping Point, Ben Shephard: “Which former professional footballer is the main subject of the 2020 biography Our Gazza: The Untold Tales?”
Keri: “David Beckham.”
Riddiculous, Ranvir Singh: “Which mythical creature appears on the national flag of Wales?”
Izzy: “A unicorn.”
Random irritations
CHANNEL 4, in its usual bone-brained, woke manner, turning To Catch A Copper into a kangaroo court for crimes against political correctness.
Channel 5’s Fawlty Towers tribute featuring a caption writer who thinks celery, apples, walnuts and grapes is spelt “Waldolf salad”.
Love Island’s Tasha Ghouri gatecrashing Countdown’s Dictionary Corner. And Lord Sugar maintaining The Apprentice has a “very intense selection process”, when it took the Press about two minutes of Googling to discover Dr Asif Munaf was an obnoxious, anti-Semitic bigot whose presence has soured this series irretrievably.
Great sporting insights
KEVIN GALLEN: “This is a must-lose game. We mustn’t lose it.”
Paul Merson: “If Rashford had trained, this would’ve been nipped in the bud. But finally, it has been nipped in the bud.”
And Jermaine Jenas: “Ross Barkley didn’t just stand out, he was outstanding.”
(Compiled by Graham Wray)
ON Amazon Prime’s Zante-based reality show Hot Mess Summer, Rylan Clark tries to get a few weeks’ honest bar work out of some exhibitionist ar*eholes who are too lazy, feral, over-entitled and unattractive to take part in Love Island, like Jay, who said: “I might be rude, snobbish and stuck-up, but that’s just me. So either get to love me or . . . ”
Bye.
LOVE Island: Dialogue of the series. Josh: “Have you had your ar*e done?”
Hannah: “Yeah.”
Josh: “Fookin’ hell.”
(Exit Hannah, with torch-bearers and attendants.)
AMANDA & Alan’s Italian Job, Alan Carr to Amanda Holden: “If you were a plant, what plant would you be?”
Japanese knotweed.
“Can I say what I think? Japanese knotweed.”
Told you.
LET’S face it, tonight’s C5 documentary Sue Perkins: Lost In Alaska isn’t going to end the way many of us would hope.
So I’m taking a week off to rue the invention of GPS tracking devices, thermal imaging equipment and smartphones.
Column returns February 23.
TV Gold
BBC2 offering a well-deserved repeat for Nawal Al-Maghafi’s brilliant investigation Murder In Mayfair. Boris Johnson rediscovering his true vocation (comedy), on BBC2’s brilliant Putin Vs The West, where he described Xi Jinping’s negotiating technique as: “More dead bats than a Wuhan cave.”
Sky Max’s Fantasy Football League proving a worthy successor to the Skinner and Baddiel masterpiece.
And the triumphant return of Curb Your Enthusiasm, for one final run, on Sky Comedy, which began with Larry David, above, screaming abuse at Siri: “It’s Wolfsglen restaurant, you c***.”
(Pause) Metallic voice: “Bundt cake is a cake that’s cooked in a Bundt pan.”
Lookalike of the week
THIS week’s winner is Bez from the Happy Mondays and Geoff Hurst, who was an integral part of that legendary England team who famously lost 3-2 to Scotland in 1967.
Sent in by Colin McKie, of Newark, Notts.