Critics already hate Ben Elton's new sitcom

Ben Elton’s new sitcom has been panned by critics before it has even aired.

The Wright Way, the comic’s first sitcom since 2005, starts on BBC One tonight – but early reviews have not been kind.

Radio Times writer David Butcher says the show is ‘creaky and laboured’ and ‘irrelevant’ and asks: ‘Who would believe this is [by] the same comic whose stand-up routines sandblasted away the pebbledash of 1970s tit-gags and racism?’

The Guardian’s Stuart Heritage wrote it off, saying:  ‘the whole thing is irredeemably dreadful.... The characters shout all of their lines in exactly the same way, regardless of the situation.’

And The Scotsman’s Andrea Mullaney called it ‘stinker’ with jokes left over from a Seventies sitcom.

The show stars David Haig as a health and safety officer called Gerald Wright – his surname giving the show its title – enforcing petty diktats in a local council.

When the show was commissioned Elton said: ‘I'm as excited today as I was when The Young Ones was commissioned 30 years ago.’

However his last sitcom was also panned. Blessed ran for just one series on BBC One in 2005 and starred Ardal O’Hanlon and Mel Giedroyc as new parents.

Elton tried to make a comeback on on Australian TV in 2011 but it ended in humiliation. His much-hyped live sketch show Live From Planet Earth was axed just three episodes amid plummeting ratings and a critical mauling, when it was dubbed ‘a screaming, embarrassing failure’.

However, the BBC will be hoping The Wright Way could repeat the success of Mrs Brown’s Boys, which has become a huge hit despite facing constant, similar criticisms of feeling dated.

Here is a teaser clip: