Although it’s not exclusively billed as such, the fact Stuck (BBC Two) is the first sitcom created by and starring Dylan Moran since the cult hit Black Books, which ended in 2004, makes it worthy of attention.
At five episodes of 15 minutes each – the first two aired this week – it feels more like a movie told in instalments.
Moran is a middle-aged (and increasingly unemployable, due to industry ageism) graphic designer named Dan, while the excellent Morgana Robinson is his younger girlfriend Carla.
A show-stealer
While Moran maintains a reliably weather-beaten, hangdog deadpan in playing Dan, Robinson (celebrity trivia fans take note, she’s the half-sister of Brody Dalle from rock group the Distillers) is a show-stealer as the light-hearted but also somehow unsatisfied Carla.
“You know everyone goes around feeling disgusting?” she asks her friend Joy (Juliet Cowan), who’s having relationship trouble.
“It’s all part of being a normal healthy piece of s***.” Dan and Carla don’t seem to be in trouble themselves, but the mundanities of a long-term relationship are incredibly well-observed by Moran.
Bedtime bickering
The pair bicker about broken cabinet doors and online quizzes at bedtime, and Dan’s deeper expressions of love are awkwardly bundled up in complaints about the curtains.
He seeks medication from the perfectly named Dr Pete Cosmos (Neil Maskell, another scene-stealer) and seems increasingly disconnected from modern life. As coming-of-middle-age stories go, it feels like it might be a slow, pocket-sized classic.
Martin’s Scottish Fling
Line of Duty’s long shadow continues to fall in the strangest places, meanwhile.
This week Martin ‘Steve Arnott’ Compston returned to Scotland and his own accent in Martin Compston’s Scottish Fling (BBC Scotland/BBC Two), yet another entry in the celebrity Scottish travelogue genre.
It’s a field which can never be too over-crowded, as long as the scenery is visible. Pairing Compston with his friend, television presenter Phil MacHugh, this one has the pair geeing each other up as they set off in a VW camper van to find “what makes our nation tick today.”
The initial ‘lads on holiday’ feel doesn’t bode well, but things settle down with a game of crazy golf alongside Helensburgh-raised RuPaul’s Drag Race star Lawrence Chaney in Dunoon.
It’s silly, but also nostalgic, and they start an easy-going discussion about growing up gay in smalltown Scotland.
West Coast adventures
Exploring the West Coast in this first episode, the pair climbed a hill with ‘Hillwalking Hijabi’ podcaster Zahrah Mahmood, ate Loch Fyne seafood at scenic Argyll restaurant Inver (Compston appears to have something approaching a fear of shellfish) and went coasteering in Knoydart, which seems to involve jumping from ever-higher rocks into the water.
Despite putting the Vengaboys on the campervan stereo, the pair – the taciturn but game Compston, in particular – seem to hit some level of personal discovery in just one episode, and it’s not long before they’re driving through Glencoe singing Caledonia.
“It’s a bit cheesy,” says Compston, wondering why he took so many foreign flights when all this was on his doorstep, “but I feel like I’m falling in love with Scotland all over again.”
Scottish travelogues are fun, but never more so than when a Scot’s eyes are being opened to their own country.
