Prismark10 If The Wright Way returns for another series I shall write a letter to The Pope to have it certified as an official miracle.Gerald Wright is an overzealous, hyper irritated Council Officer dealing with Heath and Safety and forever coming out with acronyms that are rude but he is unaware of this.He is newly singled but still carries a torch for his ex wife and he has to deal with a lesbian daughter and her dippy girlfriend.Ben Elton once and for all proves that he has lost his comedy instincts. In the late 80s he was a comedy colossus both as writer and performer. This series is just one note with little creativity, few laughs and badly produced.Its very hard to sympathize with Wright who is irritating. David Haig has little to go on with making his character likable, despite being accepting of her daughter's same sex relationship. I think the writer wanted to have elements of Victor Meldrew here but its does not work.At the work environment we have more two dimensional characters. Mina Anwar who was so good in 'The thin blue line' ends up repeating same plot pints each week suggesting she might had murdered her late husband. She has a side plot about entering a dance competition with the Mayor, a man who dislikes Wright.Haig is manic, loud and unfunny. The sit com is a throw back to the 1970s and early 1980s. This is not a Mrs Brown Boys rude and crude, knowing throwback. There are some laughs here and there but its badly made and the acting is too broad.

Trevor Mcinsley You would think that overzealous health and safety would make for good comic fodder. Indeed there are a few good lines on the subject and the main character is exactly what I imagine these people to be like in real life. He plays it pretty well.Unfortunately the programme fails to deliver so much in every other regard that it is genuinely just painful to watch. It is actually impressive just how they could ruin this to such an extent. If Ben Elton were not the writer this never would have seen the light of day. Indeed if this was the first thing Ben Elton ever produced neither would his career... it pains me to say.An array of stock characters which feel like they are almost designed solely with the intention of being annoying and physically unpleasant to watch. Silly voices, pseudo catchphrases and incredibly predictable (but enormously strung out) punchlines... coupled with just the most over-the-top laughter track I have ever encountered makes this utterly dreadful.If you took every half decent line from the entire series as a whole you might just be able to squeeze out a twenty minute sketch show that'd actually be vaguely entertaining... but I doubt it.

Jellybeansucker I think many who have ripped this new sitcom apart are overlooking the fact that it's meant to be risible. Elton is lampooning the councils who have given us this silly culture of fear of doing anything. The H&S team are zealous idiots who go to great lengths to justify their own jobs and importance. It was a subject itching to made into a sitcom. How you make a subtle sitcom of this subject I'm not sure, so the bold almost cartoony approach was justified imo.But it is this bold style which has turned many off, and Elton certainly hasn't held back on the cartoon like characterisation and dialogue. Also he dives deep into his juvenile love for puerile sixthform humour, with little regard for its suitability here, he just throws it all in without really examining whether it's a good match or not for the sitcom.So it's a very long way from being great but it does the job effectively for me and I've laughed watching every episode as well as cringed a bit. Best of all it sets up punchlines and payoffs aplenty and has proper sitcom story lines that have a beginning, middle and end. A throwback style sitcom and a bit too cartoony it may well be, but I laugh at this more than I do many so called modern day sitcoms.

Mouth Box In these enlightened days of clear and prominently displayed health and safety signs, I think I should warn you about this programme right from the start: Danger! Comedy Free Zone! Ben Elton used to be a bold,funny, intelligent, era-defining stand-up. He co-wrote Blackadder, one of the most finely crafted and hilarious sitcoms of his generation. He wrote books that became instant best-sellers. So, who is the man behind "The Wright Way", and what the hell has he done with Ben Elton? I didn't really like Gordon Brittas the first time around, and I like him even less in his apparent reincarnation as Gerald Wright, a stressed-out health and safety executive working at Baselricky Town Hall. But, like Shakespeare's comedies, every episode of The Brittas Empire had at least one laugh in it. The Wright Way has no laughs in it at all.There's no room for subtlety in David Haig's performance at Gerald Wright. He shouts, he pulls funny faces, he puts on a silly voice. But whatever he does, Haig cannot alter the fact that the script is not even mildly amusing, and the underlying structure of the show is fatally flawed.The setting feels hackneyed, the characters are badly thought out, thinly drawn, and utterly two dimensional.There's a mayor who speaks only using backwards sentences. There's a man-eating, middle-aged Asian woman. There's a vaguely camp guy who looks a bit like Alan Carr, and another bloke who doesn't appear to possess any character traits at all, other than the handy ability to pick up any line of dialogue that Elton hasn't allocated to one of the others.At home, there's Wright's daughter and her lesbian partner. Another box ticked for the right-on commissioning editors at the BBC, who probably spent more time deciding how many gay and ethnic characters there should be in the series than they did actually reading the script.It all feels very lazy indeed – even the title of the show is indistinct and will be easily confused in the TV listings with The Wright Stuff on Channel 5.Perhaps Mr. Elton should spend less time listening to pimply comedy executives and focus groups, and more time following his instincts and listening to the little voice in his head that used to tell him the right way to make people laugh. I'm reminded of the old adage that the camel was designed by committee.Unfunny is too small a word for it. If anyone happens to find Ben Elton's Mojo, please be kind enough to put it in a jiffy bag and post it back to him immediately.Read more reviews at Mouthbox.co.uk