“You can perform Pete and Dud but you cannot recreate their relationship.” Read on for the verdict on last night’s TV.

PETE AND DUD: THE LOST SKETCHES

PETE AND DUD: THE LOST SKETCHES, BBC2

“This lamentably misguided programme brought Cook and Moore back not to life but an ectoplasmic flicker…What went wrong? The casting for certain. Also the format. But the performances were dud…McGowan had it nearest right when he said you can perform Pete and Dud but you cannot recreate their relationship.”
Andrew Billen, The Times  

“An odd affair, clumsily blending the preparation for the show with a live-audience studio section… Some of the restagings here were frankly embarrassing, carrying the stale whiff of a thousand am-dram revues. It was a reminder of just how good the originals could be, but not perhaps in quite the way that was first intended.”
Tom Sutcliffe, The Independent

“It’s not entirely successful: possibly because only Pete and Dud can do justice to Pete and Dud; possibly because this isn’t their greatest material; most probably a combination of both. More of a fizzle than a bang.”
Sam Wollaston, The Guardian

101 WAYS TO LEAVE A GAMESHOW, BBC1

“By the time I’ve seen six ways to leave a gameshow, I’m a bit bored. 101 Slight Variations on One Way to Leave a Gameshow would have been a more honest title.”
Sam Wollaston, The Guardian

“It is stupefyingly dull, stretching out 15 minutes of material over an hour that feels more like three.”
Tom Sutcliffe, The Independent

DIVE, BBC2

“It showed that intelligent writers with an ear for the vernacular are out there and so are the naturalistic performers…some international TV juries might want to take a look.”
Andrew Billen, The Times  

“Everything about Dive looked like an inside job. It looked like a sweaty apprentice piece for the attention of Working Title. It looked like the sort of thing bored Tristrams like to be involved with…The story was a social worker’s check list of working class clichés. The worst thing in this litany of silly undergraduate pomposity was the hopeless threadbare dialogue…It was just silly and juvenile and rude.”
AA Gill, The Sunday Times

THE OLD GUYS, BBC1

“There isn’t a single new thing in it. The concept, the look, the timing, the pacing, the setups and laugh lines were all pensionable in 1978. How can anyone still commission stuff this corpse-like?”
AA Gill, The Sunday Times

Topics