The Cockches

Posted by John Hoare on September 17, 2003 11:51 PM

My report of the The Crouches on Tuesday: mainly utter shite, but Rudolph Walker as Langley and Don Warrington as Bailey continue to rise above the material and be consistantly excellent. The stuff with Langley approaching the 'Hostel for Single Men' in the rain was very amusing indeed. As for Danny John-Jules, the reason we're covering the show - he was good. Certainly far better than the Crouch family themselves (excluding Langley) - but he's not really given the opportunity to be as good as Rudolph or Don. My two heroes.

Forgetting about the characters, a couple of things really bug me about the production of the show. Firstly: the whooping from the audience whenever something "outrageous!!!1" happens is immensely irritating. Laughter, fine: whooping, no. Secondly: why the hell run a trailer for the next show over the end credits (which is pointless and irritating enough in itself), and then have another, completely different trailer straight after the show finishes? Grrrr.

Interestingly, Media Guardian reports that the show "held on to most of its audience", and that "The second instalment had 3 million viewers, or one in five of the audience, at 10.35pm, 200,000 down on last week." Completely against my predictions. It beat ITV News (which had 2.5 million) and the second half of Channel 4's Unarmed and Dangerous.

As for next week, it hasn't yet been moved round in the schedules to give the other programmes a chance - it's still 10:35pm on Tuesday. The episode is Uncle Sonny, and the description reads: "A visit from Uncle Sonny causes mayhem for the Crouches. The saying 'you can't choose your family' has never rung more true for the Crouches." The phrase "the Crouches", there. To be honest, much as I hate to say it, it's probably worth watching, if only for Rudolph and Don. Pity the rest is so excrutiating.

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