Sky’s new costume comedy series Chickens a big hit

TV Watch with Bernie Ni Fhlatharta

The Brits are great at costume drama and not bad at comedy either, so it’s interesting to see a costume comedy series just started on Sky 1.

Chickens (transmitted on Thursday nights) is a unique concept – a story about the only three men in an English village not to go to war, the First World War that is.

So, it’s 1914 and we see all the women in the village, young and old, working the land, keeping the home fires burning and basically throwing their weight behind the war effort in a bid to make the country stronger against the enemy, Germany.

The three men are made of up a pacifist, a failed enlister (he has flat feet) and the village idiot – well coward really as he just didn’t want to go to the Front.

It’s not usually my thing but it was something the whole family watched together, which is a rare event in any house, I’m sure, and it wasn’t bad, as comedy goes.

The three actors – Jonny Sweet of Playhouse Presents and Simon Bird and Joe Thomas of The Inbetweeners – have written and produced this series, which smacks of The Last of the Summer Wine.

It is definitely a period piece and the one liners aren’t bad, but it is a skit and no doubt it will get saucier as the weeks go on.

Another comedy on the same channel on Sunday nights is A Touch of Cloth starring the brilliant John Hannah and Suranne Jones formerly of Coronation Street.

This is the second series and I must admit, I only started watching now. It is about Detective Cloth, not Frost, and is a parody of detective and crime stories.

It is a slapstick of sorts with a mix of styles. The camera work is like that used in the CSI series and like that US series, a lot of scenes are shot in a morgue but unlike that series, the camera lingers far too long on gruesome mutilated corpses.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Sentinel.