Big School Page 2

I'm really hoping this lives up to its hype as it does have some great comic actors/actresses in it. :)

It really does have a good cast.

Walliams's hair is quite scary though.

That's true about David's hair. Philip Glenister also looks a bit rough as a P.E teacher!

Loved it! After the awful Badults and Count Arthur strong this was a breath of fresh air, and who knew David Walliams could do funny without having to revert to being camp.

Bravo BBC.

I thought it was a rather mixed bag - some bits were good and others weren't. But not really that bad. I will probably watch it next week!

Pretty terrible. Some of the acting was okay, but generally everything else was poor. Unbelievable, annoying characters, unfunny and predictable dialogue, and just nothing interesting at all about the formulaic story.

I'm shocked some of the top people in the comedy industry think this is a good enough standard.

What the hell was that Pat removing her bra gag?!

I thought it was a decent start. Some things worked better than others. I thought the table tennis ball experiment was a good joke to start off with.

All of the main actors are playing roles where you could say they have been typecast - Walliams as the stuffy, straight-laced loner, Tate as the eccentric and feisty French teacher, Glenister as the macho, testosterone filled PE teacher and De La Tour as the damaged, humourless headmistress with what appears to be an alcohol dependency. This isn't a bad thing as it means they should play to their strengths. I particularly warmed to Tate's portrayal of the French teacher and made me wish I had a French teacher like that when I was at school. That way I would never have dropped the subject at 14.

Bearing in mind it was a first episode, I think there is plenty of promise but it needs time for the character development to take place, whereas I think modern audiences tend to want everything to catch fire straight away. The lack of a laughter track is something the show benefits from too.

It might not turn out to be a comedy classic, but there is enough potential there for me to want to continue watching the rest of the series which has been an all too rare experience with many of the recent sitcoms I have seen on TV.

Walliams not being camp? Are you sure about that.

The problem with it is you can see it written on a page, but when it gets to acting it, the situations and words and characters don't all fit together.

Also this type of 'sit-com' needs a laughter track, I guess the problem was finding one.

After the recent horror of The Wright Way, it's nice to see BBC One can do decent sitcom.

Not brilliant, bit of a mixed bag, but I liked it. Few gags/jokes out of place and a bit obvious/lame, but I liked some parts. The running simple French gags I liked. The alcoholic headteacher has been done before too, but I liked that they didn't show her swigging or drunk, just imply it.

Looks like one of those that'll get better later in the series. I'll keep watching if I like further episodes enough! :)

I thought it was poor. It felt tired and derivative, a bit like every other school sitcom aired but worse than all of them. The joke about the PE teacher getting an erection was just crass. Cheap laughs. I knew - as did everybody watching - that Frances de la Tour was going to open and swig that confiscated can of beer the second the student left. Sometimes being able to predict is funny, it was just wearisome here.

I am a secondary school teacher and I can tell you that Waterloo Road is the funniest school show ever, and that's meant to be a drama. Made me want to go back in time and watch Please Sir!. I felt depressed after watching it, it was so lame. I bet it's cost a lot too, with that cast. Ah, well.

I laughed a few times at this. Namely the scenes featuring Frances De La Tour channelling Alistair Sim in drag.

But as for the rest, the characters weren't the remotest bit identifiable or have any truth about them. Phillip Glennister takes the prize for the worst mugging.
Tate and Walliams are at least used to doing grotesques but Jo Scanlon looks like she wishes she wasn't there. And who can blame her condsidering her recent top notch comedy CV.

Might give it another go, certainly not the most painful sitcom experience from the channel that bought you The Wright Way.

I thought it was funny throughout the whole episode. I liked the bit at the end.

Considering the potential of the cast this was a pretty poor effort. It felt really stale and nothing new, it even had a Please Sir!-style elderly teacher. Really not sure why anyone would give the idiot from the BT adverts a job as he's utterly awful.

I dug this. Far from hilarious, but very entertaining.

Big School was small on laughs - "if you pardon the pun". ;)