Green Wing is another of those comedies that really has just sailed past me. I suppose The Mighty Boosh would be another recent equivalent.
The first series of Green Wing, recently repeated in the run-up to the debut of the second series last Friday, ran around 60 mins per episode including ads. While I wasn’t a regular viewer, one of my major criticisms of the first series was that episodes were too long. With all the clever clever camera work, it had the feeling of padding and filler.
So it was really disappointing to discover that the opening episode of series 2 ran to 70 minutes. Even given Channel 4’s penchant to over-fill their most popular shows with ads (recall that at times Lost ran 65 minutes in the UK when even in ad-saturated America it only lasted 60 minutes for a show that runs 42 minutes ad-free), that’s a long time. Particularly with a sitcom. And, I suppose, particularly with a sitcom that I only find passably amusing.
It just doesn’t do it for me. It’s simply not funny enough, and there’s too much style over substance.
It’s up against Hustle on BBC1 despite the sensible time to run it being 10.00pm when there’s less direct competition (Channel 4 has made the same mistake, in my view, by running the first couple of episodes of Derren Brown at 9pm on Sundays right up against Planet Earth. If C4 are disappointed with the ratings of the first couple of shows, they might look towards the competition. Next week, ITV brings out its big guns with a new David Jason vehicle which will destroy all in its wake).
Interestingly, Tamsin Grieg, who I’m a big fan of, was on Jonathan Ross on Friday plugging a show that goes out on a competing channel just an hour or so before Ross’s own show. Ross mentioned that many viewers might remember Grieg from her roles prior to Green Wing and Love Soup… appearing in plentiful adverts. Actually, where more viewers are likelier to remember her is as Debbie Aldridge in The Archers.