Frankie Boyle has a reputation for being outrageous, and his new C4 show, Frankie Boyle's Tramadol Nights, certainly didn't disappoint. No sooner had the comic bounded on to the stage than he was ridiculing an audience member for looking like "a dead baby drawn by a child" and describing the Pope and Susan Boyle as "two people who look unconvincing in a dress". Running themes included paedophilia, anal sex, masturbation, mental illness and drug abuse.

The show is a mix of stand up, sketches and an animation called George Michael's Highway Code in which we see the celebrated singer not paying due care and attention to the road as he indulges in various practices I feel are best left to your imagination.

Boyle's stand-up is characteristically assured and hard hitting, peppered with astute and acerbic observations. He is also disarmingly likeable.

However, the sketches are less consistent, undermined in no small part by the star's inability to act his way out of a paper bag. Pastiches of The Green Mile and Knight Rider went on far too long, taking their initially amusing comic concepts to the very edge of tedium.

On the whole, however, this is a very funny show. Was I offended by the material? Not really - Boyle really must try harder.

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The controversial comic is now free of the BBC straitjacket - but has Channel 4 just given him enough rope to hang himself?

Bad luck Daily Mail. We hate to be the bearer of bad news but its favourite new hate figure, Frankie Boyle, had 1.3 million viewers tune into his new Channel 4 show Tramadol Nights last night but only drew, wait for it, 10 complaints. Better get looking at the messageboards instead chaps.

There's been no good reason to watch Mock the Week since Frankie Boyle upped sticks, so I'd been looking forward to reviewing Frankie Boyle's Tramadol Nights. Unfortunately Channel 4 said there were no previews available, which is usually PR speak for "We don't think it's much good and we want to avoid it getting a kicking." Brian Logan has reviewed Tramadol Nights for us this morning to see if our fears were justified, though if Channel 4's decision to promote The Morgana Show, another new comedy series, instead is anything to go by then Frankie is dead in the water.

The Morgana Show couldn't be more different from Frankie Boyle's show [which was scheduled before it]. Slow-burning, character-based sketches which often didn't go anywhere but were mostly watchable purely because of the performances. Morgana Robinson came to the attention of Channel Four executives after sending in a home-made DVD and was fast-tracked to the cast of the TNT Show before being given her own series.

Many of the sketches featured brilliantly crafted characters, such as has-been Hollywood actress Madolynn, but lacked any funny lines. There's no doubt that Robinson is an excellent character comedienne, and does the best impression of her good friend Fearne Cotton that you are ever going to see, but too many of the sketches felt like nothing more than a showcase for her acting abilities without providing much humour. There were some exceptions, such as a really enjoyable sketch about a couple who run a funeral home.

While it wasn't brilliant, there was enough quality in The Morgana Show to deserve a look at the second episode, which will feature some more characters. Which is probably more than Frankie Boyle's Tramadol Nights deserves, sadly.

Frankie Boyle is the only comedian currently working who has the ability to delight and offend in such equal measure and he more than met expectations tonight with this new blend of stand-up and sketches.

Cantering gleefully - but never gratuitously - past the boundaries of taste and decency, Frankie brought us such gems as George Michael's Highway Code and Loose Women Iran.

His acting isn't necessarily up to much, but his comic timing is perfect and the script displayed flashes of brilliance.

Boyle did, however, perform a disappointingly weak sketch parodying The Green Mile, but his take on Knight Rider more than made up for it.

The episode's standout piece was undoubtedly his attack on the BBC's perceived penchant for political correctness, in a sketch about a bland TV show called Untitled Street. 'I've got that thing you asked for,' says one faceless character. 'Adjective, adjective, verb,' replies the other.

His live material was also excellent - despite not sitting too naturally amongst the sketches - and his interaction with the audience provided ad-libbing worthy of its own dedicated show.

And with some fantastically acerbic rants about religious people and the mentally ill (they are of course much of a muchness, according to Boyle), it was clear to see that the comedian felt free to insult and incite in his quest for humour.

Naturally, the mood of the programme was unsettling, but actually, the most disturbing thing about the show was the rare sight of Boyle smiling so much. Always in character, of course.

Frankie Boyle's Tramadol Nights review

Channel 4 played its cards very close to its chest with Tramadol Nights; releasing not so much as a preview clip before last night's premiere, perhaps for fear of sparking tabloid outrage. And, sure enough, there was plenty to offend in Frankie Boyle's stand-up and sketch hybrid - but also plenty to enjoy for those who have no issue with his pungent humour.

Glaswegian comedian Frankie Boyle's controversial interjections on Mock The Week turned that show into must-see TV for many, and his loss made the show immediately less infamous. There's certainly a place for Boyle's brand of "shock comedy" on network television, particularly in a landscape currently dominated by family-friendly comics like Michael McIntyre, Rhod Gilbert and John Bishop. Sadly, Frankie Boyle's Tramadol Nights is a horrendous mess, on the evidence of its first episode.

It uses a tried-and-trusted format: stand-up comedy interspersed with sketches. What's unfortunate is that (a) Boyle's stand-up routines are taken directly from his recent tour, meaning many fans will have heard the jokes before, and (b) the sketches were idiotic attempts at shocking people that dragged on past their natural end points. The first sketch, running with the idea that David Hasselhoff's character in Knight Rider was mentally ill, was perhaps the worst offender - a target 25 years out of date, a stupid idea you'd expect from a schoolboy, producing a sketch that seemed to last forever. Other sketches included candid camera spoof "Hide Me, I've Killed A Kid", an animated "George Michael's Highway Code" (topical?) and a bizarre parody of The Green Mile where the black character's supernatural power came from... raping people?

Tramadol Nights was objectionable in a way it wasn't aiming for; a show with zero intelligence behind it. I could scarcely believe Frankie Boyle's the bearded ringmaster of this tripe, as the prospect of a Channel 4 comedy from him was a delicious prospect up until last night. Too much of its sketches were pale excuses for Boyle to visually enact jokes that work better in the minds of an audience being told them verbally. At the very least, someone should have reminded Boyle that a sketch works best if it's less than two-minutes long, not twice that.

The sole positive: you don't need to buy Frankie Boyle's DVD as a stocking filler this Christmas, because it seems likely all of its material will be served up here each week.

It's not a widely held sentiment but, occasionally, you could feel slightly sorry for Frankie Boyle, someone who's now more famous for being controversial than for actually being funny. Still, anyone who describes Jonathan Ross as "a £500 haircut on top of a pile of melting ice cream" can't be entirely bad, a fact you hope is borne out by this mix of sketches and live material.

Former Mock the Week regular Frankie Boyle has repeatedly courted controversy with his near-the-knuckle jibes. This new mix of sketches and stand-up is unlikely to be to everyone's taste, but let's hope it shows there's more to Boyle's acerbic comedy than merely getting laughs by causing offence.