Decent ratings for Coogan's new comedy

Steve Coogan’s latest comic creation, Saxondale, attracted a respectable, if not spectacular, two million viewers to BBC Two last night.

The show, about a roadie turned pest controller with anger management issues, was seen by ten per cent of the audience at 10pm.

Last night’s show, also starring Morwenna Banks and Little Britain barmaid Ruth Jones, was the first of seven episodes.

Its audience was up on the channel’s average of 1.8 million viewers for the Monday night timeslot, and was more than twice that of Channel 4’s The Play’s The Thing (700,000) and Five’s Big Love (900,000) on at the same time, according to the overnight figures.

The show received guarded response from the critics.

In The Guardian, Nancy Banks-Smith said Saxondale was ‘exquisitely awful’ but added: ‘Then again, If You Like your comedy with a dash of agony, you'll enjoy it.’

Jim Shelley in the Mirror called it ‘something of a triumph’, adding that ‘under the humour, emotions like anger, despair, self-hatred and bitterness are never very far away’.

But Joe Joseph in the Times wrote the show was ‘sometimes so slow-burning you wonder if it might go out’.

Published: 20 Jun 2006