The Peter Principle

The other key to sitcom success

There will be sitcoms that fail for whatever reason. On the Sitcom Geeks podcast, we enjoy talking about them, partly because failure is funny. But also examining failure is often more informative than the successful show where success seems inevitable. (It wasn't).

The three scriptwriters of The Peter Principle (BBC 1) were ill advised to use lines like "Very amusing!" and "Ha, ha! Very amusing!" Even when it's true - and it wasn't - it isn't wise.

The Peter Principle (BBC1), astonishingly from the blue chip production company Hat Trick, is a vacant farce about an incompetent bank manager. [...] Like the toad which wears a precious jewel in its head (don't try and check on this, children), The Peter Principle has the brilliant Jim Broadbent. Broadbent was the best Marie Antoinette I ever saw. And Marie Antoinette, let me tell you, was funnier than this.

No laughs in a poor investment

Jim Broadbent has gone from a major role in Woody Allen's Bullets Over Broadway to a starring role in The Peter Principle, a television sitcom so archaic and predictable that even he, wondrously gifted comic character actor that he is, cannot save it.