Very Cool!!!

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Absolutely Fantastic

It's funny watching the elements come together in this complicated scam. On one hand, the set-up isn't quite as complex as it seems, but there's an easy sense of fun in every exchange.

If The Wright Way returns for another series I shall write a letter to The Pope to have it certified as an official miracle.Gerald Wright is an overzealous, hyper irritated Council Officer dealing with Heath and Safety and forever coming out with acronyms that are rude but he is unaware of this.He is newly singled but still carries a torch for his ex wife and he has to deal with a lesbian daughter and her dippy girlfriend.Ben Elton once and for all proves that he has lost his comedy instincts. In the late 80s he was a comedy colossus both as writer and performer. This series is just one note with little creativity, few laughs and badly produced.Its very hard to sympathize with Wright who is irritating. David Haig has little to go on with making his character likable, despite being accepting of her daughter's same sex relationship. I think the writer wanted to have elements of Victor Meldrew here but its does not work.At the work environment we have more two dimensional characters. Mina Anwar who was so good in 'The thin blue line' ends up repeating same plot pints each week suggesting she might had murdered her late husband. She has a side plot about entering a dance competition with the Mayor, a man who dislikes Wright.Haig is manic, loud and unfunny. The sit com is a throw back to the 1970s and early 1980s. This is not a Mrs Brown Boys rude and crude, knowing throwback. There are some laughs here and there but its badly made and the acting is too broad.

This is getting a 7 because of the scripts - which i will come to later.Most have panned this as rubbish but i like it. Great idea of Health & Safety office in a council as its not been done and there's always a daft story about a council somewhere in the UK doing something completely stupid. This ridicules it.Gearld Wright is the head of the H&S team which is a ram-shackled collection of different personalities (ill leave that to surprise) and has a habit of using a million words to describe something where ten would do. They are constantly looking into the H&S of daft things, last episode i watched was about pins in the packaging of shirts...His home life isn't much better than work with his ex wife showing up with her Adonis of a new boyfriend, daughter Susan moving in her girlfriend who has trouble speaking English....Its a laugh in my opinion (and I'm going to get rated down for that) The humour is obvious and, OK it might be a laughter track, is funny with laughs in the right place unlike modern comedies where you have to look for the humour (read my review on Cuckoo). Ben Eltons scripts do contain a lot of his stand up shows but it is funny. Only thing i would have done different is made the daughter and her girlfriend as sisters as they are different personalities where adding in boyfriends would give it another route for comedy. I said ignore the critics and watch it for yourself..

I think many who have ripped this new sitcom apart are overlooking the fact that it's meant to be risible. Elton is lampooning the councils who have given us this silly culture of fear of doing anything. The H&S team are zealous idiots who go to great lengths to justify their own jobs and importance. It was a subject itching to made into a sitcom. How you make a subtle sitcom of this subject I'm not sure, so the bold almost cartoony approach was justified imo.But it is this bold style which has turned many off, and Elton certainly hasn't held back on the cartoon like characterisation and dialogue. Also he dives deep into his juvenile love for puerile sixthform humour, with little regard for its suitability here, he just throws it all in without really examining whether it's a good match or not for the sitcom.So it's a very long way from being great but it does the job effectively for me and I've laughed watching every episode as well as cringed a bit. Best of all it sets up punchlines and payoffs aplenty and has proper sitcom story lines that have a beginning, middle and end. A throwback style sitcom and a bit too cartoony it may well be, but I laugh at this more than I do many so called modern day sitcoms.

If anyone thought Ben Elton had still got it 5 minutes of this show will change your mind. For his latest outing Elton decided it was time for some cutting edge comedy about something everyone hates, Heath and Safety, right kids!?Unfortunately what we get are endless cheap knob gags, achingly slow predictable punchlines, patronising ethnic caricatures presented with a Brent-esque misguided attempt to be politically correct and finally a Mayor who repeats every line backwards. There are some fine actors in this show and it's painful to see the likes of Robert Daws and David Haig slogging through such garbage in a vain effort to bring Elton's script to comic life. 'Health and Safety is not a subject for levity' remarks Haig's character, this show certainly seems to prove the point