TV review by Steve Bennett

Appropriately enough for a comedy about drone pilots, Bugsplat! seems to have snuck in under the radar, this test episode airing on Channel 4 last night with little fanfare.

Perhaps the tricky – and very current – scenario made it something of a hot potato. War comedies are nothing new, of course, from M*A*S*H to Bluestone 42, but Bugsplat! is set not amid the intensity of the front line, but in a makeshift office in a shipping container on some windswept English airfield.

It is from this inauspicious setting that pilots James and Peter – a reunion of W1A’s Hugh Skinner and Rufus Jones – and the sociopathically cold Lexi (Lauren O’Neil, till know best known for being the girl on the platform in those twee match.com ads) rain death from above, splatting the bugs of jihadists in Afghanistan.

‘Sitting in an office killing people. I may as well be working for Haringey Social Services,’ was one of the more bitingly savage lines in the half-hour, which was written by Guy Jenkins, whose political co-creation Ballot Monkeys preceded it.

Overall, though, the tone of Bugsplat! was more wry than savage, with the incompetence of superiors and the ‘health and safety’ gone mad attitudes towards reducing collateral damage frustrating the more gung-ho pilots. And it turns out the bug they splatted in this, erm, pilot episode was the wrong target, causing the spy-in-residence, Gina (Fiona Button) to try to ‘rebucket’ the fatal blunder as a success.

The comedy itself was something of a misfire, too, despite a few choice moments. Despite an illustrious cast, the characters didn’t leap out of the screen, and the plotting and script seemed unambitious for such a potentially dark subject matter, crying out for tart satire.

There may also be questions about how much more could be said if this were picked up for series. In just 22 minutes, they’ve bombed the wrong target, joked about a woman flashing her boobs at the drone, and raised questions about the allegiances of very-probably Muslim IT guy Mohammed Mohammed, even as he was knocking back tequila shots.

Jenkins seems to have raided his own back catalogue a little, too, with Squadron Leader Barry Smithson’s day being repeatedly interrupted by phone calls about the trouble his wayward daughter was in at school… just like Drop The Dead Donkey’s editor George Dent.

And it probably doesn’t auger well that one storyline from this episode was drawn from that oldest of comedy set-ups, the man walking in on his wife having an affair – even if it drone technology gave it a 21st Century update.

Review date: 7 May 2015
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett