When I flicked this on for the first time, my initial reactions was "oh no - not ANOTHER Irish comedy show". After all we've never been the best a producing comedy. Comedy writers yes- but not sketch shows.
In fact most of our successful comedy shows of the last few years have all been made in Britain. Maybe the Irish production values aren't up to scratch - I dunno.
But after a few mins of watching, I couldn't believe that what I was watching was from Ireland. In fact I checked more than once that it was on RTE, and not C4 or BBC - I even called my wife into the room to show her that "something funny is on RTE!!!"
It's not all perfect though, some of the sketches can be hit and miss and it's all fairly insular, I can't imagine people not living in Ireland getting a whole lot out of it. That and I thought the first series was better than the second but as a whole it is definitely worth a look.
Actually it's worth watching just for the catholic church sketches - they might be an easy target in today's society but some of the comedy ideas portrayed are just genius. (Watch out for the priest in the picture)
So well done RTE - on the first funny comedy series by a team of Irish writers that one of which wasn't Graham Linehan.
