Cancer in the Lungs of British Comedy

Being a wee bit exhausted yesterday evening, I collapsed on the sofa in front of The Smoking Room, a sitcom I am happy to say I have not had a chance to see before.

Predictable, poorly written, poorly acted, poorly paced, populated with unconvincing characters, yet with a distressing absence of funny lines, unoriginal, derivative, infantile and utterly unengaging.

Of course, sitcoms can get away with all of those things now by electing not to have a laughter track, excusing the paucity of jokes with pretentions towards dramatic significance like The Royle Family or delusions of being trendy and new like The Office.

Or maybe there is a laughter track, there just weren't any places for people to laugh.

In any case, after twenty minutes I'd had enough, so I switched it off and went to bed.

It's enough to make one long for an episode of Friends. (I can't believe I just typed that.)