Diane Morgan makes a credible AI robot in her new six-part BBC1 comedy, Ann Droid. Rigid, blank and garbed in a Blake’s 7-style jumpsuit, “Linda” is an Ann Droid model, a humanoid care robot from a decommissioned line. She’s hired by loser music shop worker Michael, played by Paul Ready (who starred with Morgan in Motherland) to help his mother Sue (Sue Johnston, Morgan’s castmate in the underrated sitcom The Cockfields), who keeps having falls but denies it (“I fainted!”).
Sue and Linda serve as timely proxies for twin existential anxieties: the ageing population and the advent of AI. Will our robot masters reign over us, or will they just remind us to take our beta blockers and carry us upstairs to bed?
Linda’s mechanical blankness sits easily with Morgan’s deadpan style, brought first to her Emmy-nominated character Philomena Cunk, the spoof interrogator of historians and experts originated on Charlie Brooker’s Weekly Wipe. Cunkisms of pure comic excellence are delivered in Morgan’s Bolton accent, as she pursues points only she comprehends (“Were the pyramids built from top to bottom or bottom to top?”).
After Cunk came Mandy, star of Morgan’s micro-sitcom, starting in 2019, a pouting, workshy, cig-puffing anti-heroine with bird’s nest hair, anglepoise posture and a belief in aliens (“They’re moving amongst us”). The show boasted an eclectic roster of guest stars (Shaun Ryder, Alexei Sayle, Maxine Peake, among others), while the fantastical plots included trips to space, shoot-outs with Russian terrorists, and a Chernobyl-type fatberg disaster in a sewer (“You’d need a scented candle the size of Eccles to mask that stench”).
At times, the series lacks bite, and more humour could have been extracted from the menace of AI
At times, the series lacks bite, and more humour could have been extracted from the menace of AI
With Mandy, Morgan deftly worked a seam of surrealist-absurdist British comedy. Her mini-masterpieces of dead-eyed daftness echoed the best of Tony Hancock, Victoria Wood, Julia Davis and Vic and Bob. Is Ann Droid a worthy addition to the Morgan canon? Co-written with the Australian comedian Sarah Kendall (playing the delivery driver who transports Linda), it’s full of terrific performances, charm and spirit.
It’s poignant too. Sue, mourning her dead husband, is initially opposed to getting help from a machine (“Whatever life I’ve got left I do not wish to spend it with a robot”), but she bonds with Linda, who trills in a Joyce Grenfell-type voice. Elsewhere, the series is amusingly unglamorous, set in places such as charity shops and indulging Michael’s hopelessness, as he attempts to repair things with his wife (Andrea Valls).
At times though, Ann Droid lacks bite, and perhaps more humour could have been extracted from the menace of AI. Strangely little is made of tech-threat, save some allusions to machines doing human work. And Linda herself could also be funnier. She’s a giggle when telling children a scary story during a camping trip (“This planet is dying and you are all going to die with it”), but she could have done with more such scenes.
That said, the final episode, a faux-thriller featuring a “romance robot”, is dynamic and imaginative. The series bursts into silly life and feels a lot more in keeping with Morgan’s other work. This is where Ann Droid could and should go if it wants to.
Will Ferrell is another maestro of comic absurdism, but of the American tradition exemplified by those who share his Saturday Night Live origins (John Belushi; Gilda Radner; Chevy Chase), by Steve Martin in his early standup days, and, latterly, by Steve Carell and Ben Stiller.
Ferrell was particularly magnificent in 2004’s Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy – in which he managed to make 1970s TV sexism hysterical – as well as the fashion boss in Zoolander. I could go on, and indeed on. Short version: Ferrell knows funny. A shame, then, that his new Netflix golf comedy, The Hawk, which he co-created and in which he plays a written-off champ – Lonnie “the Hawk” Hawkins– chasing a career Grand Slam, fails to find its swing.
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Last year, there was Apple TV’s golf comedy Stick, starring Owen Wilson; his brother, Luke, plays Hawk’s rival in this one. Molly Shannon plays Hawk’s ex-wife, Jimmy Tatro his pro-golfer son, and Fortune Feimster plays his caddie.
The Hawk should be fertile Ferrell territory: an underdog with a big male ego and a good heart on a mission in idealised, goofball America. With tartan trousers and sunburn, Ferrell is sporadically very funny, driving his clapped-out motorhome around, and giving his golf balls intense pep talks: “You are a ball. I am a man. Classic redemption story.”
Problems arise because there are no fewer than eight 30-minute episodes to fill. Each is crammed with too many characters and subplots, too much juvenile crudity (there’s a great deal about “boners”), as well as what may appear to be dated homophobic and misogynistic asides.
I miss Ferrell’s endearing fallible-everyman-in-overdrive energy, but, even more, I miss his comic discipline. In The Hawk, there’s too much overplaying, repetition and self-indulgence. Ferrell is a gifted performer and writer, but this series gets stuck in the bunker.
Photograph by Gary Moyes/ BBC/Boffola Pictures