| Genre: | Comedy |
| Creator: | Matt Lucas Julian Dutton Ashley Blaker |
| Starring: | Matt Lucas Alex Macqueen |
| Country: | United Kingdom |
| Language: | English |
| Num Series: | 1 |
| Num Episodes: | 6 |
| List Episodes: |
|
| Executive Producer: | Layla Smith Matt Lucas |
| Producer: | Charlie Hanson Katie Mavroleon |
| Director: | Charlie Hanson Matt Lucas |
| Editor: | Jon Blow |
| Location: | Langleybury, Hertfordshire |
| Runtime: | 25-30 minutes |
| Company: | Netflix John Stanley Productions |
| Network: | BBC Two |
| Related: | Little Britain |
Pompidou is a British television comedy series for BBC Two created and written by comedians Matt Lucas with Julian Dutton and Ashley Blaker & James Foster and Jon Lamont.[1] It began airing on 1 March 2015 on BBC Two.
Produced by Lucas' own company John Stanley Productions[2] for the BBC, Pompidou is the first all-visual, i.e. having no meaningful dialogue, half-hour mainstream TV sitcom since Bradley in the late 1980s. (Although there have been several visual comedies broadcast in the interim, none of these were half-hour sitcoms: Mr. Bean usually consisted of two or three sketches, Oddbods was a one-off, The Baldy Man consisted of two sketches per episode, and Uncle Max and Zzzap! were both 15-minute children's shows.)[3]
A pilot was written in 2012, and 6 episodes were commissioned by Controller of BBC One Danny Cohen and Controller of Comedy Commissioning Shane Allen in Spring 2013. The series was written and filmed across 2013 and 2014. The first episode aired on BBC Two on 1 March 2015.[3]
Inspired by Charlie Chaplin, Morph, Laurel and Hardy, Pingu, Buster Keaton, Jacques Tati, and Marty Feldman, Pompidou aimed to reinvent visual comedy for the twenty-first century, and create an international series for a global audience.[4]
Jane Asher starred in episode 3, Anita Dobson played the role of Sally in episode 4 and Beattie Edmondson appeared in episodes 1 and 6. Australian actress Rebel Wilson, Matt Lucas' roommate when they both lived in the U.S., makes an uncredited cameo as a Vicki Pollard lookalike from Little Britain in episode 5. Julian Dutton, one of the show's co-writers, appeared as a cameo in episode 2 as the cockney, tea drinking Delivery Man.
| Episode | Original air date | Title | Viewers and % share | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | "Hunger" | 0.84m (4.2%) | ||
| 2 | "Lottery" | 0.62m (3.2%) | ||
| 3 | "The Bowl" | 0.67m (3.5%) | ||
| 4 | "The Date" | 0.53m (2.7%) | ||
| 5 | "Hoarder" | 0.5m (2.7%) | ||
| 6 | "Cold" | 0.5m (2.7%) |
The series was widely panned on release. Ben Dowell of the Radio Times labelled it "a strange beast", describing Lucas' character as "selfish, vain, venal and oddly childlike. I think he’d like me to add "appealing" but I can't."[5] (He did, however, point to a rare favourable review by one of his colleagues, Jack Seale.)[6] Echoing remarks made by many other reviewers, Sally Newall of The Independent compared Lucas' shtick unfavourably to Rowan Atkinson's in Mr. Bean, as well as Lucas' own as the faux-disabled character Andy Pipkin in Little Britain.[7]
Michael Hogan of The Telegraph called it "pretty painful: 25 minutes that felt like 75, with telegraphed jokes and interminable scenes. Justin “Mr Tumble” Fletcher does this sort of clowning better over on CBeebies."[8] The idea that the series would be better served on a children's network was echoed by commenters on the trailer on YouTube.[9] Negative audience reaction continued when the show came to Netflix as a "Netflix original", where it became the entertainment provider's lowest rated original series.[10]
A retrospective on the series and its reception, by The Guardians Brian Logan, spoke more positively, if not unreservedly, about Pompidou. Describing a supposed strain of snobbery in British criticism of silent comedy, and comedy that children can enjoy, Logan goes on to say that "some set-pieces don’t work ... And yes, some of it’s hokey and old-fashioned", but also speculates that any silent comedy vehicle may well have received "the sniffiness that’s greeted Pompidou".[11]