Rittle-on-Sea, 1916: while the village men are being shelled in France, Simon Bird’s flat-footed Cecil, Joe Thomas’ pacifist George and Jonny Sweet’s spectacularly dim Bert remain at home, branded "chickens" by every indignant woman left behind. The six-part Sky One sitcom, spun from a 2011 Channel 4 Comedy Showcase pilot, never leaves the green lanes of Essex, preferring to mine the petty humiliations of the rejected: Bert forgetting there’s even a war on, Cecil hiding his medical exemption, George refusing to kill anything larger than a spider and all three dodging bricks hurled by the local girls’ hockey team.
Scripts by the leads keep the tone cheerfully cruel. A dead soldier’s widow becomes a romantic opportunity, a dinner guest is rumoured leprous, and Barry Humphries’ preening headmaster sacks George for teaching German, then promotes Bert for drilling pupils like bayonet-wielding chimps. Ratings slid from 381,000 to under 350,000 across the run, yet the series earned a 2014 Broadcast Award nomination for Best Comedy Programme and a cult following for its savage portrait of male inadequacy in a country busy turning its sons into ghosts.
Production Details
Sky One / 1 Season / 6 Episodes / 2013
Created by: Simon Bird, Jonny Sweet, Joe Thomas
Writer(s): Simon Bird Jonny Sweet Joe Thomas
Producer(s): John Rushton
Main Cast
Simon Bird as Cecil Mowbray
Jonny Sweet as Bert Walpole
Emerald Fennell as Agnes
Joe Thomas as George Wright
Sarah Daykin as Winky
Ellie Kendrick as Constance
Ilan Galkoff as Matthew
Kit Connor as Clem
