Film review: All My Friends Hate Me

What makes All My Friends Hate Me both good and bad is you never quite know what genre it wants to be.

All My Friends Hate Me review

A brilliant British horror-comedy of manners.

All My Friends Hate Me review - beware of the bilious

Peter's 'friends' are a foul bunch in snarky new comedy.

All My Friends Hate Me review

This aptly named British indie black comedy about a birthday party gone excruciatingly awry is a prickly gem, lean and to the point

From what I can best deduce from the first two episodes of Flowers, writer Will Sharpe is attempting to create some sort of British version of Arrested Development. He's certainly taken elements of the American show most notably a family full of eccentrics led by suicidal children's author Maurice (Julian Barrett) whose family pile is in the middle of the countryside. Maurice is married to Deborah (Olivia Colman) who is constantly trying to put a brave face on things despite having a husband who doesn't love her and two emotionally repressed children. Maurice and Deborah's twins Donald and Amy (Daniel Rigby and Sophia Di Martino) are both in love with their neighbour Abigail (Georgina Campbell) however both don't quite know how to show it. There are also a gaggle of characters surrounding the Flowers family including a sort of manservant played by Sharpe himself and Abigail's awful plastic surgeon father George (Colin Hurley). What Flowers was missing for me was a sort of proxy for the audience to show us how truly awful the family are, similarly to what Jason Bateman did in Arrested Development. But Sharpe failed to create any sort of normal character and therefore I struggled to relate to anything that happened to this catalogue of quirky arty types who didn't seem particularly well-drawn to me. Even the set pieces of the first two episodes, notably Deborah and Maurice's engagement party and the death of Maurice's mother, did little for me as their use of grotesquely-drawn humour has been done better elsewhere most notably in the work of Steve Pemberton and Reese Shearsmith. Despite the fact they were ill-served by a script that thought it was a lot cleverer than it was I felt the cast did well regardless. Olivia Colman did as much as she could with the material she was given and I at least found her character tolerable in small doses. Additionally I felt that Georgina Campbell did well in portraying the only normal character of the bunch in Abigail and I thought if she'd been more prominently placed in these first two episodes I may have watched more. But by the time Maurice's mother had snuffed it at the end of the second episode I felt my time to depart the Flowers family had come as well as they'd struggle to make much of an impression on me over the hour that I'd spent with them. Although there were small flourishes of promise in Sharpe's writing, I felt he over-egged the pudding too much with his characters being too over-the-top to care about and the situations far too outlandish to ever buy into.

Georgina Campbell interview

Georgina Campbell is fretting that Olivia Colman will think she's a stalker. "I'm following her around," she tells me, laughing. She's referring to the actresses' joint-billing in both Channel 4's new comedy Flowers and Broadchurch's third series.

Everything you need to know about Flowers

Today Channel 4 announced details of their new dark new sitcom Flowers that partners Broadchurch's Olivia Colman and The Mighty Boosh's Julian Barratt.

Tripped is a new E4 comedy drama that focuses on two friends and a number of multiple dimensions. Tripped's lead characters are stoner Milo (George Webster) and his more responsible friend Danny (Blake Harrison) who has recently got engaged to girlfriend Kate (Georgina Campbell). Danny's decision to choose a work colleague over Milo as his best man leads to him getting stoned and then confused when a bearded version of his friend arrives in his front room warning him of various dangers. There begins a rather confusing first episode which plays like Quantum Leap meets Harold and Kumar as Danny and Milo start to play with time travel. The first alternate universe they encounter sees Danny become Kate's stalker and Milo welcoming the return of his dead grandmother however things get weird when she starts to come on to him. I did have high hopes for Tripped due to the fact that its co-written by The Missing's Jack and Harry Williams alongside Jamie Mathieson who has written for a number of different sci-fi shows. Unfortunately I never really got on board with Tripped as its key concept never appealed to me and its characters were rather one-dimensional. Although I liked the idea of two friends bonding together after several years apart, everything about the relationship between Danny and Milo was a little clichéd. Similarly I felt that the wonderful Georgina Campbell was once again wasted in the thankless girlfriend role just like she was in Sky One's After Hours. On the plus side I do feel that this is the first successful post-Inbetweeners vehicle for Blake Harrison after the disastrous Edge of Heaven and Big Bad World. George Webster is also a promising talent however I don't think he and Harrison shared much chemistry which hindered the majority of the story. Whilst I'm sure Tripped will find an audience, sadly I won't be one of them as I found it a rather lacklustre execution of a promising premise.

Cheerful stoner Milo (George Webster) and Danny (Blake Harrison) are best chums, but Danny is moving on, with a job in pet insurance and wedding to plan with fiancee Kate (Georgina Campbell). Fortuitously, the pair are thrown back together when another Danny from a parallel universe turns up dressed in futuristic leathers in Milo's living room, followed by a sword-wielding psychopath bent on murdering them both. It's complicated. But clever, funny and poignant, too. Think Highlander meets Spaced meets Doctor Who.

Blake Harrison & Georgina Campbell pictured filming

Pictures of Blake Harrison handcuffed to co-star Georgina Campbell on the set of E4 comedy Tripped.