TV review: Stag, BBC2, episode 2

I'm not sure how much it qualifies as a comedy now that it has got proper scary, but I'm really enjoying Stag.

Stag: episode 2 review

As with the last episode, the best thing about this episode is the characters, who are at first are mostly unlikable, but as their crisis grows you understand that each has their own problems.

Created and written by Jim Field-Smith, the creator of the wonderful The Wrong Mans, alongside George Kay, Stag follows the exploits of a boisterous gang of men on a stag party. Stumbling along as a late arrival to the hunting weekend is Ian (Jim Howick), a mild-mannered geography teacher who is totally different to the other stags celebrating the last weekend of freedom of Johnners (Stephen Campbell Moore). Ian's weekend gets off to a bad start from the get-go as he's left at the side of the road by the rest of the party before being landed with a bar bill from the local pub's stern waitress (Sharon Rooney). Events soon take a dark twist when the men are abandoned by the local gamekeeper (James Cosmo) and forced to fend for themselves in the wild. Quickly some of the party are picked off and are thought to be killed whilst the rest start to turn on each other with suspicion quickly falling on outsider Ian. I have to admit it took me a while to adjust to Stag which has none of the charm or quirky British humour which made The Wrong Mans such a joy to watch. The majority of the characters in Stag, with the exception of Ian, are initially unlikeable toffs who are described by the mild-mannered Aitken (Tim Key) as the worst kind of people. But as Kay and Field-Smith's story continues they start to reveal complexities in the characters all of whom seem to be hiding secrets of some kind. The writing duo also seem to have done their research into the sort of genre they want Stag to fit into with the general tone being that of horror thriller. There are definitely elements of both The Wicker Man and Deliverance both in the presentation of the local community and the way in which the party start to be picked off. The humour is also subtly presented with a lot of smutty, laddy banter mixed in with some genuinely funny one-liners. The ensemble cast bounced off each other perfectly with Howick brilliantly portraying the awkward outsider and the rest of the gang having excellent chemistry. I especially liked Reece Shearsmith's brief appearance as the party member who wants to escape his family as well as Borgen's Pilou Asbaek as the Danish oddball. Although I've already got an idea of how Stag is going to end I'm intrigued enough to carry on watching what must be one of the most unique TV shows of the year so far.

I had high hopes for Stag (BBC Two, Saturdays) -- a three-part black comedy by some of the team responsible for the superb The Wrong Mans -- about a stag weekend gone hideously wrong in the wilds of the Scottish Highlands. Stag parties are so often, in my experience, the best reason for wishing you had been born a woman: all that pressure to show yourself the alpha male, among painfully mismatched, pumped-up lads you often barely know, having to drink more than you'd like, watching skanky whores that do the opposite of arouse you. Can't tell you how glad I am to have got past that stage of my life.

What Stag captured very well, I thought, was the sheer repellance that stag groups often exude. I could certainly identify with the character of Ian (Jim Howick), the outsider who turns up late, doesn't know anyone, and finds that merely to survive the weekend he's going to fall in with the alien banter and submit to the random rules of arrogant bullies led by Ledge (short for 'Legend', played with Flashmanesque swagger by JJ Feild). (Ledge is scripted as having been to Harrow. This is wrong. He would definitely have gone to Wellington -- at least as it was before Anthony Seldon came along and emasculated it with My Little Pony caringness classes.)

But I didn't quite buy the tone. Obviously, it was nice to see the tossers all being picked off, one by one, Deliverance-style by the locals. But I didn't feel they'd been shown doing quite enough to deserve it. For these things to work -- see also Southern Comfort -- you have genuinely to be persuaded that the natives are sufficiently psychopathic and inbred to enact this kind of mayhem; and also, I think, to find the victims sufficiently sympathetic for you to care rather than cheer when they get cut in half, disembowelled, etc.

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Stag preview

The hunters become the hunted as each one is horribly eliminated, one gobby moron at a time.

The makers of The Wrong Mans go very dark indeed with this three-part drama, a twisted tale of a stag weekend gone horribly awry in the Scottish Highlands. Ian (Peep Show's Jim Howick) tags along for the festivities of his future brother-in-law who, it soon transpires, has a ghastly line in friends. When best man Ledge, a punchable City boy, mocks a gamekeeper once too often, they're left stranded. As if that wasn't bad enough, soon they're dispatched one by one, in grisly fashion.

TV preview: Stag, BBC2

I don't really need to tell you much about comedy chiller Stag. The cast should be enough of a selling point. Jim Howick, Reece Shearsmith, Rufus Jones and Tim Key as well as Stephen Campbell Moore, James Cosmo and Pilou Asbaek. If you don't know some of the names you'll certainly know the faces.

Stag: episode 1 review

From the producer and director of BBC Two comedy thriller The Wrong Mans comes another series that combines dark humour with a deadly chill.

Interview: cast of Stag

TV's latest genre-busting series sees a Highlands bachelor weekend become a bloody quest for survival. We brave the mud and drizzle to meet its cast.