Hold The Sunset

Hold The Sunset has such comedy greats as: John Cleese! Alison Steadman! Jason Watkins! And what were they all thinking?

Watkins in particular was handed such stark no-hopers in script terms that when the page called for him to "get stuck with his arse hanging out of a shed window" he surely rejoiced at the lack of dialogue. Hold The Sunset... even the title sounds like a mocktail served at Dignitas. Yes, it really was that much fun.

I turned to BBC One on Sunday night as the channel aired a brand new sitcom in the form of Hold The Sunset; a show that had been primarily promoted as John Cleese's big return to TV. Cleese stars as Phil; a slightly crotchety gent who has been in a relationship with his neighbour Edith (Alison Steadman) for several years after their respective partners passed away. The opening of the episode sees Phil attempt to propose marriage to Edith who eventually accepts this along with his offer to move to sunnier climes. However, their future happiness is halted by the arrival of Edith's son Roger (Jason Watkins) who has left his wife to move back into his childhood home and quickly regresses into a childlike state. Later, Roger's wife Wendy (Rosie Cavaliero) arrives at Edith's to confront her husband, however her kindly exterior frustrates her mother-in-law who quickly snaps at her. So, begins the start of a six-week journey where Roger will no doubt get angry about Phil's relationship with his mother and will probably attempt to sabotage it. For a sitcom that was promoted as Cleese's return to the BBC, he has very little to do here once the plot kicks in and Roger arrives back. Phil is presented as somewhat of a stick-in-the-mud but one that stands back and lets the drama unfold rather than doing anything about it himself. Cleese's chemistry with Steadman isn't strong enough to make me believe that the pair have known each other for decades and want to spend their twilight years together. The stand-out performance in Hold The Sunset comes from Jason Watkins who provided the sitcom's only laugh-out-loud moments, however Roger is such a petulant character that it's hard to sympathise with him. Similarly, Rosie Cavaliero's Wendy should be a sympathetic character, but she's painted as such a passive woman that you feel Edith's frustration towards her. Charles McKeown, who's best known for his work with Terry Gilliam, crafts rather obvious comedy situations which feel very tired by 2018 standards. This is best exemplified by the closing set piece which sees Roger getting stuck in the shed window whilst trying to escape an awkward confrontation with Wendy. Hold The Sunset reminds me of David Jason's The Royal Bodyguard, as both were created as star vehicles for comedy legends and both have fallen flat at the first hurdle. Despite a fine comic turn from the always-reliable Watkins, Hold The Sunset failed to make me laugh or sympathise with the characters, so suffice to say I won't be tuning in again.

Cleese splutters and trots around like an elderly ostrich with high blood pressure. Fans who were hoping to see a return of Basil Fawlty discovered instead that he has matured into a relative of the mad old Major Gowen, played by Ballard Berkeley. It was inevitable, really.

Hold The Sunset is an old-fashioned sitcom, a cross between One Foot In The Grave and Ronnie Corbett's Sorry. It remains to be seen whether audiences still have an appetite for laboured slapstick where ageing men get into scrapes and women cluck over them.

It's a classic 80s sitcom set-up: widow Edith (Alison Steadman) has been fending off marriage proposals from boyfriend Phil (John Cleese) for years, but on the day she relents, up pops cuckoo in the nest Roger (Jason Watkins), her 50-year-old man-child son who's left his family. Desperately needs jokes.

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Why do bad things happen to good people? Well, not bad exactly, but decidedly mediocre.

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John Cleese and Alison Steadman star in the exhumation of long-lost genre.

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Hold The Sunset review

In truth, it's not rip-roaringly, gut-bustingly, eye-wateringly funny. But it is rather lovely. It's wry, and gentle, and old fashioned. It is warm and affectionate and optimistic.