Blog Review

We'd be happy if this sitcom pilot was commissioned for a series. We couldn't see the similarities to Quantum Leap (it was described as a 21-century of the time-travelling drama) but we could see a likeness to Peep Show.

TV Review: Brave Young Men

I really rather liked it. The plot, such as it is, is paper thin - they're trying to stop some beer getting contaminated sometime in the future by a deadly disease... and that's it - but the enjoyment here comes from some delightful writing ("If you can time travel, how can you be late?" "He's starting to sound like my wife!").

Brave Young Men starred Tom Basden as the sidekick of a school caretaker who is told by a time-travelling civil servant that he has become "Caretaker of the World, Brighton and Hove Division". It is billed as a comic take on the sci-fi series Quantum Leap - a quantum leap backwards, I fear. As Professor Deering would sneer, one to file under whimsy.

Owen Molloy (Marc Wootton) is a mild-mannered, slightly porky school janitor who spends his days painting radiators, picking up litter and gently lusting after mousy teacher Miss Violet. So he's surprised when he's approached by a shadowy figure (a local tramp, as it turns out) who anoints him 'Caretaker Of The World: Brighton Division'.

This sitcom pilot from Steve Coogan's Baby Cow productions is essentially a provincial British take on Quantum Leap, with the earnest moral sermonising replaced by absurdity and mild bathos.

It's painfully slight, but rescued from complete inconsequentiality by the quirky premise - a lab assistant attempts to vanquish rivals at a local beer festival with his homebrew - and a decent cast including Tom Basden, who recently distinguished himself in BBC4 sketch show Cowards. At the very least, it's streets ahead of most recent BBC3 comedy commissions, which may be damning it with faint praise, but should make a series a formality.

Marc Wootton and Tom Basden star as a pair of naive nobodies who are charged with saving the planet from mpending disasters by a tramp from the future in this sweetly humorous pilot. Their mission involves some homebrew beer and a good deal of silliness.

An underlying sweetness sets this comedy pilot apart from the "hump anything that moves" tone of other digital telly sitcoms. Marc Wootton is Owen, a sad-sack twentysomething who is convinced by an apparent tramp that he's the "Caretaker of the World (Brighton and Hove Division)" and responsible for preventing present-day triggers of catastrophes to come. So is a teacher's home brew the root cause of a future pandemic or is Owen, as his mate suggests, simply "an unpaid errand boy for a gang on hobos"?

Typically idiosyncratic scheduling from Auntie. They get a more than promising pilot featuring and co-written by Cowards' Tom Basden and show it late on a Sunday night. BYM stars Basden and Marc Wootton as two dweebs entrusted with looking after the future of the planet by a ime-travelling civil servant (who might be a nutty tramp). In this first episode, saving the world involves sabotaging a real ale competition. Oh and BBC3? Give this a series, it's what you're there for.