TV Review: Krod Mandoon

It's astonishing how bad this show was. I mean, so absent were the laughs that I would have had more fun digging up corpses at the local cemetary and trying to suck the stinking marrow out of the bones. It's a show that's got less punch than a boneless pacifist.

There are some things you really shouldn't laugh at, like Matt Lucas sporting an enormous pubic wig and querying 'can I pull this off?' or jokes that depend on punning the name Horst Draper ('are you fit to mount a steed?'). But there was something so cheerily daft about Krod Mandoon And The Flaming Sword Of Fire that my sides were split.

It helped that the likes of Lord Of The Rings, Doctor Who and swords 'n' sandals epics such as 300 are ripe for a cheeky rip-off. If you take those kinds of capers deadly seriously then you'd best give Krod a wide berth. But if you enjoy fantasy adventure but wish they weren't so stuck up their own allegories then Krod, complete with its festival of umlauts, is right up your alley.

Buffed-up ex-EastEnder urchin Sean Maguire has carved out a surprising niche as a leather loinclothed spoof action hero - hey, it's a niche - and Krod is a blood brother to the muscle-bound hunk he played in Meet The Spartans. But this time with a much better script. Muscles popping out of his jerkin, Maguire's Krod is a new man in rebel hero's clothing, fretting about hostile work environments and political correctness when he should be sticking it to the bad guy. He makes a fine foil to deliciously evil Lucas, who has a big, bouncy ball as the evil Dongalor.

Subtle it isn't but Kröd works because, though this is satire drawn with a broad brush, there's still a strong story and juicy characters to sink your teeth into. Peppered with neat cameos (The Thick Of It fans will relish Roger Allam and Alex MacQueen taking turns at stealing scenes) and awash with saucy sorcery, it's the best rubbish comedy to come along in dark ages.

Krod Mandoon 1 review

Overall, for all its faults, Krod Mandoon And The Flaming Sword Of Fire was too deliberately silly to hate, and this double-bill opening slipped by rather pleasantly. I don't expect it to transform into a hilarious, incisive spoof of a genre that's nigh impossible to send-up in a fresh way, but hopefully it will at least be cheeky, fun, daft and entertaining.

There was more time-travelling drag in Krod Mandoon and the Flaming Sword of Fire, a sword and sorcery comedy that doesn't quite know what speed to be set at. It's funny, then not, funny, then not, like a car stuttering into life, then packing up. The shtick is that Matt Lucas plays a bad Sheriff of Nottingham type in the Middle Ages, Sean Maguire the hero out to ruin his despot-ery, aided by a gang of outlaws all with modern-seeming foibles.

Maguire's love interest is a pagan who delights in her sluttery. He has a magician who can't do magic and talks in sassy street talk. He has a patrician guardian who dies, and whose lover is a camp, sex-obsessed Spanish guy. Maguire is vain and confused. Lucas has lots of fun rolling his "r"s villainously. It's not terrible or pointless, but there were as many clouds as patches of sunshine. A lot of the jokes are physical (the pagan woman can't stop body-flipping) or based on deliberate comic mis-timing, with people looking askance after someone else says something silly. It tumbled along and then it was gone, a frippery - neither offensively bad, nor resoundingly funny.

You want this fantasy spoof to succeed, you really do. The cast is good: Matt Lucas can be funny, India de Beaufort is beautiful and the rest of them have some solid work behind them. And the good news is that it mostly hits the target. The bad news is that it mostly aims for late-period Mel Brooks. The strokes are broader than Mr Tickle's breaststroke.

The One to Watch: Thursday 11 June

Krod Mandoon and the Flaming Sword of Fire (BBC Two): Little Britain's Matt Lucas and former EastEnder Sean Maguire star in this a new comedy series about the adventures of a reluctant hero and his band of inept band of freedom fighters.

Think of a tale of swords and sorcery, sabotaged by inept heroes and driven along by a combination of snappy American wisecracks and exuberant British panto. That's more or less what is going on in Krod Mandoon and the Flaming Sword of Fire, in which the heroic son of a blacksmith and a stay-at-home mum (Sean Maguire) leads the resistance against the evil Meconian Empire and its ruler, the camp Chancellor Dongalor (Matt Lucas). It starts tonight with a double bill, which is probably too much of a good thing. But in small doses, it is very silly and great fun.

Eureka!: Krod Mandoon and the Flaming Sword of Fire

Writers Peter Knight and Brad Johnson on making comedy work for US and UK audiences.

Here's a new sitcom that does for sword-and-sorcery adventures what Red Dwarf did for sci-fi. Set in an ancient empire, it stars Sean Maguire as Krod, a well-toned but clueless rebel warrior with an ill-assorted retinue - a sorcerer who can't do magic, a clumsy slave and a girlfriend who seduces baddies more readily than Krod would like. (Feminism hasn't got very far in this version of Middle Earth.) Their enemy is the evil but inept chancellor Dongalor, a part Matt Lucas plays with such glee it lifts the whole show several feet off the ground. The jokes mostly come from hearing workplace jargon in a medieval setting. In the best scene, Dongalor stabs the wrong rebellious courtier by mistake: "I thought we were going to get names carved in the back of the chairs? Did that not happen? Let's make that an action item, shall we?" he says, before sending out for juice and muffins. There are broader gags that will probably work better if you've been to the pub first, including a running bestiality gag around a character called Horst Draper, and a rebel general (Roger Allam) who turns gay after a spell in the castle dungeons. But there's just enough finesse to justify comparisons with the likes of classic film The Princess Bride.

Littler Briton Matt has baddie hair day

Slimmed-down Little Britain star Matt Lucas dons a hairy codpiece as he plays a baddie in a new show.