Breeders; The Station: Trouble on the Tracks

“It was terrific: dark, fresh, brutal, funny, a little twisted and very sweary. Simon Blackwell and Chris Addison have managed the near-impossible by creating a parenting comedy that is not twee and makes the tired tropes of sleep deprivation and school-catchment obsession actually funny.”
Carol Midgley, The Times

“Tackling the less rosy side of parenthood has been done before in comedies such as Motherland and Outnumbered. But Breeders takes things to a whole new level. Perhaps family planning centres should screen it in their waiting rooms as a more effective form of contraception.”
Claudia Connell, Daily Mail

“As the mother of two kids under seven, I recognised everything in Breeders but I was stumped by the central question: why would I want to spend time watching Martin Freeman’s character when he’s such a gigantic pain in the backside? Thank goodness for Daisy Haggard who has mastered the art of dark comedy.”
Anita Singh, The Telegraph

“This is technically a comedy, but it hits so many pressure points so hard in such rapid succession that if you do laugh it will be through some quite considerable anxiety and pain. I mean that as a compliment. The second episode was a little more lighthearted – if still about as far from the essentially cosy delights of Outnumbered as you can get.”
Lucy Mangan, The Guardian

“I suspect that when The Station: Trouble on the Tracks was conceived its creators imagined The Airport with trains. What they possibly didn’t factor in is that passengers don’t spend hours hanging around railway stations, even Birmingham New Street, so human stories don’t get the chance to develop. Thus what we got were random snatches of passenger anger, stoicism and drunkenness.”
Carol Midgley, The Times

“At one stage we were, literally, watching paint dry. The only point of interest came when a Banksy mural appeared on a bridge overnight and the men had to cover it in Perspex so thieves didn’t nick it — brick by brick.”
Claudia Connell, Daily Mail