Greg Davies’s Ken Thompson, a pedantic solicitor from Amersham, expects his gap-year daughter Rachel to return with souvenirs, not Andy Samberg’s Cuckoo: six-foot-four, shirt-phobic, convinced he’s a spiritual sage. The first series (BBC Three, 2012) charts Ken’s futile attempts to dislodge the interloper from their mock-Tudor home while wife Lorna (Helen Baxendale) and teenage son Dylan (Tyger Drew-Honey) oscillate between amusement and complicity. Samberg left after the opening run; the writers killed Cuckoo off-screen and replaced him with Taylor Lautner’s Dale Jr., the equally vacant but gym-honed son Cuckoo never knew he had. Subsequent seasons loop through more deadpan class clashes: Dale training as a Jehovah’s Witness, Ken faking dementia to dodge a cruise, and Andie MacDowell arriving as a hemp-loving Texan matriarch. Roughcut Television shot the lot in Buckinghamshire, using Amersham’s old-town lanes and Chesham Bois woods as a postcard backdrop for the chaos inside the Thompsons’ kitchen. The format proved elastic enough to survive two further recastings of Rachel and a U.S. pilot order from NBC that never progressed. After five runs and thirty-three episodes, the final curtain fell on 4 January 2019, leaving Ken triumphant yet unchanged, still clutching his suburban rulebook and muttering about dishwasher etiquette.
Production Details
BBC Three / 5 Seasons / 33 Episodes / 2012
Created by: Kieron Quirke, Robin French
Writer(s): Jon Foster
Producer(s): Dan Hine
Main Cast
Greg Davies as Ken Thompson
Helen Baxendale as Lorna Thompson
Tyger Drew-Honey as Dylan Thompson
Esther Smith as Rachel Thompson
Kenneth Collard as Steve
Taylor Lautner as Dale Jr.
Matt Lacey as Ben
Selina Griffiths as Connie
Juliet Cowan as Nina
Holly Earl as Zoe
Andy Samberg as Dale 'Cuckoo' Ashbrick
Andie MacDowell as Ivy Mittelfart
