Writers: Chris Addison & Carl Cooper
Director: Adam Tandy
Cast: Chris Addison (Dr Alex Beenyman), Selina Cadell (Dean Mieke Miedema), Jo Enright (Cara), Geoff McGivern (Professor John Mycroft), Dan Tetsell (Brian), Helen Moon (Minty), Margaret Cabourn-Smith (Secretary), Robin Ince (Sir Andrew Chother) & Kim Wall (Les Goodman)
Director: Adam Tandy
Cast: Chris Addison (Dr Alex Beenyman), Selina Cadell (Dean Mieke Miedema), Jo Enright (Cara), Geoff McGivern (Professor John Mycroft), Dan Tetsell (Brian), Helen Moon (Minty), Margaret Cabourn-Smith (Secretary), Robin Ince (Sir Andrew Chother) & Kim Wall (Les Goodman)
The lab rats must conceal the defrosting of a cryogenically-frozen benefactor from a visiting university inspector...Lab Rats resembles something you missed back in 1992, now being repeated. It's comfortable and predictable in its larger-than-life nature, and best enjoyed if you forget the advances made in the sitcom format. Its style of comedy isn't something you see a lot of these days (outside of The IT Crowd, really), but it's a shame Lab Rats' own surreal sensibilities can't hold a candle to Graham Linehan's fellow geek-com.
There are moments of zany humour that stick out (an inspector easily distracted by tilted picture frames), and a few clever asides (the reasoning for disabled toilets being unisex), but not enough to last the distance. For the most part, it's gently amusing thanks to the performances of Chris Addison (likeable lead nerd), Geoff McGivern (bearded academic bighead) and Selina Cadell (doing a Dutch accents, yesh?) Dan Tetsell still looks like a hanger-on to the better characters, while Jo Enright's unassuming nuttiness is a bit too obvious for modern tastes.
"A Donor" concerns an inspector, Les Goodman (the excellent Kim Wall), arriving to carry out his duties, as Dr. Beenyman (Addison) tries to conceal the defrosting of the cryogenically-frozen university benefactor Sir Andrew Chother (Robin Ince) -- a freakishly talkative and irritating oddball apparently frozen to spare everyone their sanity. Needless to say, comedian Ince was the obvious choice for this role. There's also a bit of business with Professor Mycroft (McGivern) trying to get a satellite feed piped through to his lab, with the help of Brian (Tetsell), so he can watch himself on a Germany broadcast of the top Nobel prize-winners.
The engaging performances of Addison and McGivern save the show at times, and the premise certainly lends itself to "mad science"-style craziness, but the tone and characterisations have yet to gel. It trundles along spouting signposted jokes, hitting about three highs in the half-hour, while the cumulative nonsense didn't build to anything as gleefully bizarre as last week's giant snail ending. A projection power-cut caused by overloaded plug sockets? How disappointing.
Ince's verbal diarrhoea wasn't as hilarious as it was intended to be, and the whole idea of unfreezing someone who's spent god-knows-how-many years on ice should have been much more interesting and amusing.
Overall, Lab Rats' potential for creating something inspired isn't being reached, so you'll just have to settle for its few highlights (like the inspector's infuriating written test) to see you through. Maybe once the characters have embedded themselves in your mind, and the scripts begin to weave the sub-plots together in interesting, unpredictable, clever ways... this sitcom might hit its stride. But for now, colour me unimpressed.
18 July 2008
BBC2, 9.30 pm
