It's been good-natured if not slap-your-sides funny series.

The Metro, 25th September 2008

Undermining its mockumentary format with telegraphed jokes and sitcom cliches (this week: the hilarity of Brummie accents) The Cup pales in comparison with The Office, but still manages a few neatly hit moments.

Metro, 11th September 2008

The comic strangeness was prevalent in The Wrong Door, a sketch show that relied heavily on technical and CGI trickery. One very funny sketch featured a group of sprites escaping from a bottle and making a poor drunken fool's life that much more horrible by texting a malicious message to his girlfriend and framing him for watching hotel porn.

One young woman was dating a dinosaur, as in Tyrannosaurus Rex, who visits her parents' home and destroys everything within, including eating the family dog. A robot stomps over London asking where it left its house keys, destroying swaths of the metropolis. The show is hit and miss - Superhero Tryouts, an X Factor for wannabe superheroes, was laboured and directionless - but the writers Ben Wheatley and Jack Cheshire (who also direct and produce) have at least originated a novel and bizarre show.

Their strangest creation, and the most brilliantly maddening, is a scientist's unfortunately successful attempt to create a new life form. Somehow a malformed DNA structure means that this creature is the most irritating thing on the planet. The scientists hate it. We hate it. This creature destroys everything it touches, but only after wheedling, pleading and manipulating. "Are we there yet?" it repeats. Eventually, the guy who took the creature in drove at a post to end it all.

Tim Teeman, The Times, 29th August 2008

So ogreish are the characters that there's absolutely no point buying into them. If there are moments of heart, they're buried so deep that you basically couldn't care less about what happened to them. The main character (whose name I can't even be bothered to learn) is such a dick, that you find yourself willing ill toward him. It's not that he's a 'bit sad' or 'cares too much'... he's just... a dick. And who really wants to hang around with dicks?

mofgimmers, TV Scoop, 29th August 2008

Episode two of this fly-on-the-wall mockumentary about coaching an under-11s football team, and it's still difficult to see its point. If this is just entertainment, then its well-observed dialogue can sometimes make it feel very clever. "I can't believe you started a fight in front of the kids," one aspiring coach is told. "You don't get anything without a fight in this life," he replies in perfect soccer cliché. But there's the nagging feeling that the writers are striving towards a greater significance - unfortunately, it's unclear what that might be, beyond the truism that adults' behaviour is often more juvenile than that of their children.

Matt Warman, The Telegraph, 28th August 2008

This 'sitcom' about a dad obsessed with his son's football team was almost insultingly bad.

The series utilises a 'mockumentary' approach that owes a very heavy debt to The Office (although this series has been adapted from a Canadaian series called The Tournament). This does it no favours at all. Where The Office was realistic, understated, intelligent and subtle, The Cup is unrealistic, over the top and, to put it bluntly, stupid.

The Custard TV, 26th August 2008

The Cup borrows the fly on the wall documentary format that served The Office so well and inevitably suffers by comparison. The Cup totally lacks the necessary subtlety or deft comic touch.

What it does have, however, is invention, great characters and an uninterrupted procession of really funny jokes.

Harry Venning, The Stage, 22nd August 2008

It's a shame all the laughs weren't put together with the same degree of care - but the show still belongs in the Premier League.

Matt Bayliss, Daily Express, 22nd August 2008

The Independent Review

It's all moderately amusing, but would be funnier if it didn't try so hard. Part of the problem is that it hasn't grasped how to use the documentary format. The script is far too ready to tell you, rather than show you, what's going on.

Written by Robert Hanks. The Independent, 22nd August 2008

The Times Review

The prospects for The Cup do not look good: before the first episode the critics' knives were heartily slashing away at its past-it mockumentary style. Is it that bad? OK, it's not The Office (and really, the mockumentary should have died back then, in a blaze of rousing, nation-conquering glory). But The Cup has its charm. It is set, as all these things about salt-of-the-earth types are, in the North where people have common sense and are down to earth, away from us flibbertigibbets with feta cheese and soulless apartments in the South.

Written by Tim Teeman. The Times, 22nd August 2008

The Cup tries hard to be The Office of the football field, using the same makey-uppy documentary device. Nothing wrong with that - it's a good way of getting to know characters quickly without forcing plot lines, although here it doesn't feel as fresh as when Ricky Gervais was doing it. And there are some decent performances, although Steve Edge as main man Terry stands out a bit too far perhaps. His character, a super-competitive footballing dad, is not just in your face, he's rammed right down your throat. Subtle this isn't, and that's the problem.

Sam Wollaston, The Guardian, 22nd August 2008

The BBC probably thinks it's on to a winner with The Cup, a new 'comedy' filmed in a docu-style that follows the fictional under-11s football side Ashburn United in their quest for glory. Sadly, the Beeb should note that last night's opening episode failed to live up to the hype, following in the footsteps of 2007's FA Cup final when Chelsea played Manchester United in a p*** poor match at Wembley.

The creators of The Office might well hold their heads in shame because their success could be blamed for spawning all these 'reality' comedies, which persist in following 'real people' (that would be actors) as they ape human emotions. In The Cup's case, the characters are so unlikeable, it's like watching ten David Brents awkwardly careering across the screen.

The producers must have believed they had the perfect blend: a reality comedy about football. Genius. Yet it's packed so full of cliches, it's hard to care. Bossy woman? Aggressive football coach? Pushy dad? Tick, tick and tick.

The dominating desperado dad, Terry (Steve Edge), was 'living his dream through his son' as he became more and more childish in his behaviour. This appeared to be the constant joke, that the adults' actions were constantly more juvenile than those of their children. The score, at the end of the day, was: BBC 0, Viewers 0.

Alex Wilkins, Metro, 22nd August 2008

Liked The Office? Thought it could have done with more football in it? What do you mean, 'no'? Well, let's assume that you did: rejoice! Because, my friends, The Cup is here.

A pseudo-documentary on Ashburn United FC's quest to qualify for the Northern Midlands Under-11s Cup, it manages to succeed in a key area where so many other new BBC Two sitcoms have failed: it doesn't make me want to grate my face.

Starring Steve Edge (aka Mark's Nazi-loving friend in Peep Show), what The Cup lacks in originality - obsessive Sunday League dads, harassed football mums, mud being intrinsically funny - it more than makes up for with true sucker-punch jokes.

When the gynaecologist dad of the team's joint leading scorer puffs, "Who needs rolling hills in the Cotswolds when you have all this?" and the camera zooms to a - window-view of a grim ­Bolton building site, you groan at the on-the-nose joke - but when he follows it with the wonderfully deadpan "but the move was - essential, there are more ­vaginas in Bolton", you ­realise the real punchline was just around the corner.

Or take this marvel from the co-owner of a funeral home who helps manage the league: "Business was cool last year and, of course, we rely on the heat to siphon off some of the pensioners." It takes a good ear for comedy to realise that 'siphon' is the perfect word here, and what makes the line funny.

The Cup also makes good use of what we now must call the Arrested Development ­Interlude, in which the sentence "My daughter is a little competitive", say, becomes an excuse for a cut-scene of the daughter putting a boot in someone's face. This makes fun, if unusual, viewing: one minute you're watching an Office-like downbeat comedy of embarrassment, the next you're watching the team coach smashing cups and telling 10-year-olds: "If you lose today, you'll spend the rest of your lives in shame!"

Still, it's a promising start. If The Cup can add empathy to the mix, we could be on to a winner.

Stuart McGurk, The London Paper, 21st August 2008

Taking the mockumentary format into the world of under-11s football, this new sitcom shows signs of promise. Steve Edge starts as Terry, a pushy dad whose belief in his son's on-the-pitch prowess has tipped over into an unhealthy obsession.

Faced with a bad-tempered coach, his wife's indifference and a child more interested in cookery that Cristiano Ronaldo, Terry's thwarted ambitions are neatly played out and he enjoys strong support from a cast including Tanya Franks (Karen from Pulling) as the team's ballsy manager and Dominic Coleman as her browbeaten husband.

The Metro, 21st August 2008

Pick Of The Day: A mockumentary set in the rough and tumble world of under-11s football, this is The Office crossed with Mike Bassett: Football Manager. It's full of stereotypes from the world of rain-lashed Sunday mornings.

And casting-wise this instantly likeable Bolton-set sitcom scores a double. Steve Edge is pitch-perfect as obsessed football dad Terry McConnell with Ceallach Spellman as his tousle-haired striker son Malky.

Terry's career was ended by a busted knee - now he pours his ambition into his boy. You get the feeling though that Malky has other ideas. "What I really like to do is cook," he explains unexpectedly at one point. "Mostly Mediterranean..."

Jane Simon, The Mirror, 21st August 2008

It's a strange little comedy this, a mockumentary about an under-11 football squad and their squabbling, competitive parents.

A host of familiar faces, such as Steve Edge from Phoenix Nights and Tanya Franks from EastEnders and Pulling, are amusing in parts but this is probably best st enjoyed by football-mad parents themselves.

Anila Baig, The Sun, 21st August 2008

Coach Blackley fixes the players of Ashburn United with a stare so fierce it might make Sir Alex Ferguson quiver. "If you lose today," he rants, "you will spend the rest of your lives in shame!" But the squad cowering in the changing room are small children, competing in the North and Midlands Under 11 Cup. Their insanely competitive parents are even worse, trying to relive their lives through their offspring, and carrying it to an obsessive extreme.

Written by the Absolutely veterans Moray Hunter and Jack Docherty, the humour in this mockumentary is often desperate and is based on a Canadian show about a junior ice hockey team, which suggests that these desperate impulses may be hard-wired into the human brain.

Paul Hoggart, The Times, 21st August 2008

This new six-part comedy brings the ambition and style of The Office to the world of under-11s football. Steve Edge, of Phoenix Nights, plays soccer dad Terry McConnell, living his life of failed, feeble dreams through his son Malky (Ceallach Spellman). The action is all acutely observed, but the characters, in this first episode at least, are simply not likeable enough.

Matt Warman, The Telegraph, 21st August 2008

This is agonising. You want it to work, as it's a great idea: a sitcom set in the world of under-11s football, where obsessive parents live out their dreams from the touchlines. But it fizzles and sputters on the screen.

Steve Edge plays Bolton dad Terry, so fixated on his son's success on the pitch he becomes a sociopath, bickering with rival parents and, when things go wrong, sulking along to Del Amitri in his shed. Edge (who was in Phoenix Nights) does a good job, but the cast are trapped in a mockumentary format that keeps tripping up the comedy. Characters are forever glancing at the camera crew or explaining what just happened as if being interviewed. Done right (as in The Office), that can double the laughs, but here the comic ideas, such as Terry pestering the team coach until he has a stroke, are just too broad. Shame.

David Butcher, The Radio Times, 21st August 2008

The Times Preview

Despite the morally deficient characters, you are still carried along by the thrill of the game, the excitement of competition, that feeling of winning and losing. There will be some uncomfortable recognition going on in living rooms when The Cup airs next Thursday.

Written by Emma Mahony. The Times, 16th August 2008