Try living with a posh man from Somerset and see how easy it is to find comedy you can both laugh at.
I live with such a man and have tried to acclimatise him to Glasgow humour but it's a slow process. I showed him some Kevin Bridges but he just frowned at the screen, occasionally saying things like, 'but what's boaby?' As the credits rolled he said, 'I didn't find that terribly amusing. Let's watch Ever Decreasing Circles.'
So thank you to the writers and cast of The Sunny (BBC2) for creating a sitcom so sparkly and gaudy and sharp that I laughed, with my raucous Glasgow humour, and the posh, alienated boyfriend laughed too - though I suspect he laughed reluctantly, not wanting to lose that glacial Somerset cool.
The Sunny is a one-off pilot which, if the BBC have any sense, will be made into a series. How rare it was to truly laugh at TV comedy. And I don't mean chortle and nod, I mean laugh.
The sitcom is about a grubby community centre in North Glasgow. It offers yoga, dancing and martial arts as well as a cup of tea and some shelter from the rain.
The staff are unsettled because one of their former colleagues is coming back. Charlie Dolan (Robert Florence) escaped from the scheme to become a pop star with The Shoe Ponies. The rest were left behind and are miffed that he's suddenly decided to grace them with his presence. Margaret (Jane McCarry), insists they should be grateful. 'Charlie Dolan could walk into any community centre in North Glasgow!'
But Charlie's memories of his home town aren't too fond either. When The Shoe Ponies were gigging at the local clubs, they'd be heckled by Wullie (Paul Higgins) to 'play some Johnny Cash ya wee pr*cks!'
When Charlie bursts in to The Sunny his old pals grimace and sniff. They're embarrassed at still being in The Sunny whilst Charlie went off to make it big, but they're damned if they'll reveal their hurt feelings. This is Glasgow!
Emma, the dance instructor, feels the most insecure, telling everyone she's moving on to better things. 'Emma is a door to a better future and I am walking through her', she insists, whilst Wullie is furious at having to surrender his high-flying career due to heart trouble and is now reduced to restless days at The Sunny.
But the person most bothered by Charlie's return is his old pal and former band manager Joe (Iain Connell). It rankles that Charlie succeeded without him and he's stuck in The Sunny working as a janitor, sometimes melting a broken toilet seat on the cooker so he can fuse the edges back together.
The two old pals dodge the nippy fact that their comradeship went sour till they finally fight it out in a cramped, soggy attic. Charlie mocks Joe, saying he was a terrible manager. When he got theband's logo painted on the van, 'you managed to spell both SHOE and PONIES wrong!'
By now the comic moments were coming so fast my fingers were skittering all over the keyboard trying to get them down for this review . Wee neds vandalise the karate instructor's car. They've sprayed PERVERT across it in yellow paint but, relax, he says, that's always been there. That's how I got it so cheap. Or when Emma consoles frustrated Wullie by saying she once planned to have sex with him in her car and even bought a new Magic Tree for the event. There were also some great one-liners from the lovable Glasgow wrestler Grado, who plays a burly regular called Haircut.
Eventually we learn why the mighty Charlie has deigned to come back to Glasgow and why he hangs around The Sunny every day. Joe gets the truth from Charlie's mum (Barbara Rafferty) then confronts him to declare, 'Yer skinto!'
Yes, poor Charlie is bankrupt, washed up and his pop career is over. He's back home, trying to get used to mediocrity again.
This was a clever and ambitious theme for such a raucous comedy. The Sunny was sweary, punchy and gallus, but woven throughout was the old Scottish refrain of 'ah kent his faither', with the resentful residents of the community centre desperate not to be impressed by Charlie or allow him to think he's special. There was also a nod to the desperation of the X-Factor generation who think fame can be grasped in an instant and that fame equals talent and dedication. Kudos to the writers for taking these bigger themes and mashing them up gloriously with some rough humour.
Scrambling desperately for a criticism I'd say there were too many characters for an introductory episode. I found myself googling the show afterwards to remind myself of names. But I'm clutching at straws here; they could have piled a few more in, plus the cast of Les Miserables, and I'd still have loved it.
If the BBC want to avoid more noisy protests at Pacific Quay - from me, and whoever else will join me - they'll give The Sunny a full series.
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