The Cup. Copyright: Hartswood Films Ltd
The Cup

The Cup

  • TV sitcom
  • BBC Two
  • 2008
  • 6 episodes (1 series)

Sitcom about the selfish and obsessive behaviour of the parents of an under-11 football team, filmed in a documentary style. Stars Steve Edge, Jennifer Hennessy, Tanya Franks, Dominic Coleman, Samantha Power and more.

Press clippings Page 2

The Independent Review

It's all moderately amusing, but would be funnier if it didn't try so hard. Part of the problem is that it hasn't grasped how to use the documentary format. The script is far too ready to tell you, rather than show you, what's going on.

Robert Hanks, The Independent, 22nd August 2008

It's a shame all the laughs weren't put together with the same degree of care - but the show still belongs in the Premier League.

Matt Bayliss, The Daily Express, 22nd August 2008

The Cup borrows the fly on the wall documentary format that served The Office so well and inevitably suffers by comparison. The Cup totally lacks the necessary subtlety or deft comic touch.

What it does have, however, is invention, great characters and an uninterrupted procession of really funny jokes.

Harry Venning, The Stage, 22nd August 2008

This is agonising. You want it to work, as it's a great idea: a sitcom set in the world of under-11s football, where obsessive parents live out their dreams from the touchlines. But it fizzles and sputters on the screen.

Steve Edge plays Bolton dad Terry, so fixated on his son's success on the pitch he becomes a sociopath, bickering with rival parents and, when things go wrong, sulking along to Del Amitri in his shed. Edge (who was in Phoenix Nights) does a good job, but the cast are trapped in a mockumentary format that keeps tripping up the comedy. Characters are forever glancing at the camera crew or explaining what just happened as if being interviewed. Done right (as in The Office), that can double the laughs, but here the comic ideas, such as Terry pestering the team coach until he has a stroke, are just too broad. Shame.

David Butcher, Radio Times, 21st August 2008

This new six-part comedy brings the ambition and style of The Office to the world of under-11s football. Steve Edge, of Phoenix Nights, plays soccer dad Terry McConnell, living his life of failed, feeble dreams through his son Malky (Ceallach Spellman). The action is all acutely observed, but the characters, in this first episode at least, are simply not likeable enough.

Matt Warman, The Telegraph, 21st August 2008

Coach Blackley fixes the players of Ashburn United with a stare so fierce it might make Sir Alex Ferguson quiver. If you lose today, he rants, you will spend the rest of your lives in shame! But the squad cowering in the changing room are small children, competing in the North and Midlands Under 11 Cup. Their insanely competitive parents are even worse, trying to relive their lives through their offspring, and carrying it to an obsessive extreme.

Written by the Absolutely veterans Moray Hunter and Jack Docherty, the humour in this mockumentary is often desperate and is based on a Canadian show about a junior ice hockey team, which suggests that these desperate impulses may be hard-wired into the human brain.

Paul Hoggart, The Times, 21st August 2008

It's a strange little comedy this, a mockumentary about an under-11 football squad and their squabbling, competitive parents.

A host of familiar faces, such as Steve Edge from Phoenix Nights and Tanya Franks from EastEnders and Pulling, are amusing in parts but this is probably best st enjoyed by football-mad parents themselves.

Anila Baig, The Sun, 21st August 2008

Pick Of The Day: A mockumentary set in the rough and tumble world of under-11s football, this is The Office crossed with Mike Bassett: Football Manager. It's full of stereotypes from the world of rain-lashed Sunday mornings.

And casting-wise this instantly likeable Bolton-set sitcom scores a double. Steve Edge is pitch-perfect as obsessed football dad Terry McConnell with Ceallach Spellman as his tousle-haired striker son Malky.

Terry's career was ended by a busted knee - now he pours his ambition into his boy. You get the feeling though that Malky has other ideas. What I really like to do is cook, he explains unexpectedly at one point. Mostly Mediterranean...

Jane Simon, The Mirror, 21st August 2008

Taking the mockumentary format into the world of under-11s football, this new sitcom shows signs of promise. Steve Edge starts as Terry, a pushy dad whose belief in his son's on-the-pitch prowess has tipped over into an unhealthy obsession.

Faced with a bad-tempered coach, his wife's indifference and a child more interested in cookery that Cristiano Ronaldo, Terry's thwarted ambitions are neatly played out and he enjoys strong support from a cast including Tanya Franks (Karen from Pulling) as the team's ballsy manager and Dominic Coleman as her browbeaten husband.

Metro, 21st August 2008

Liked The Office? Thought it could have done with more football in it? What do you mean, 'no'? Well, let's assume that you did: rejoice! Because, my friends, The Cup is here.

A pseudo-documentary on Ashburn United FC's quest to qualify for the Northern Midlands Under-11s Cup, it manages to succeed in a key area where so many other new BBC Two sitcoms have failed: it doesn't make me want to grate my face.

Starring Steve Edge (aka Mark's Nazi-loving friend in Peep Show), what The Cup lacks in originality - obsessive Sunday League dads, harassed football mums, mud being intrinsically funny - it more than makes up for with true sucker-punch jokes.

When the gynaecologist dad of the team's joint leading scorer puffs, Who needs rolling hills in the Cotswolds when you have all this? and the camera zooms to a - window-view of a grim ­Bolton building site, you groan at the on-the-nose joke - but when he follows it with the wonderfully deadpan but the move was - essential, there are more ­vaginas in Bolton, you ­realise the real punchline was just around the corner.

Or take this marvel from the co-owner of a funeral home who helps manage the league: Business was cool last year and, of course, we rely on the heat to siphon off some of the pensioners. It takes a good ear for comedy to realise that 'siphon' is the perfect word here, and what makes the line funny.

The Cup also makes good use of what we now must call the Arrested Development ­Interlude, in which the sentence My daughter is a little competitive, say, becomes an excuse for a cut-scene of the daughter putting a boot in someone's face. This makes fun, if unusual, viewing: one minute you're watching an Office-like downbeat comedy of embarrassment, the next you're watching the team coach smashing cups and telling 10-year-olds: If you lose today, you'll spend the rest of your lives in shame!

Still, it's a promising start. If The Cup can add empathy to the mix, we could be on to a winner.

Stuart McGurk, The London Paper, 21st August 2008

Share this page