Review of ITV1's new police recruit comedy

They may have had to go back 20 years to get the old writing team back together again, but ITV deserves to have a hit on its hands with Piglets.  From the creators of Green Wing, this new ensemble comedy has shades of the Channel 4 comedy, but set in a police training centre rather than a hospital. And even if some of the weirder elements have been shaved off for a mainstream Saturday night audience, a strong sense of quirkiness endures.

Mark Heap rarely puts a foot wrong in comedy, and while this is a team effort, his delightfully peculiar energy makes him the stand-out. True to form, he plays a man so far from being an alpha male you’d run out of Greek letters to define him, yet he’s peculiarly content in his myriad oddities while being very prone to double entendres he’s blissfully unaware he’s making. His reference to ‘teets full of milky goodness’ in the first scene sets the tone.

He plays monkey to Sarah Parish’s organ-grinder, the hard-nosed Superintendent Julie Spry, tasked with converting the new intake of recruits – young dumb and full of com…muntiy spirit – into battle-ready police officers.

Despite complaints from the Police Federation that the title is ‘disgusting’, Piglets is rather affectionate – rapey and racist officers might just be the real problem, not some cheeky slang to describe a bunch of likeably flawed characters.

On their first day, Spry gives a speech about one of the rookies being there for the wrong reason, which is a neat device to introduce their motivates.  They include Steph, played by Callie Cooke, trying to resurrect a relationship with trainer Mike (Ukweli Roach); Sam Pote’s Leggo, forced into the family business of policing but keen to get chucked out by being as annoying and inappropriate as possible; obligatory comedy thicko Paul (Jamie Bisping), a plant from a criminal gang trying to get inside information, and smug smart-arse Afia (Halema Hussain), ravenous for the power being an officer will give her.

As with Green Wing, the pace is fast. This is, essentially, a string of brisk sketches, loosely connected by the precinct, with characters conversing in quick, bantery dialogue and enough combinations of clashing personalities to offer plenty of options.

The writers certainly have a delightfully silly way with words, too, from the Brass-Eye rundown of daft street names for drugs to phrases like ‘clutch your mounds!’, which is sure to be a meme by the end of the day. 

Whisper it, but with this and the more homely and charming Alan Carr comedy Changing Ends forming an appealing double bill, ITV might just be getting its comedy mojo back.

• Piglets is on ITV1 at 9.30pm tonight, but all six episodes are already available to steam on ITVX.

Review date: 20 Jul 2024
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett