I’ll save you the ‘Peter Kay’s New Comedy Vehicle’ puns. The PHOENIX NIGHTS comedian is back, in his first sitcom for a decade…
In 2014 a film was released called LOCKE starring Tom ‘Bane from THE DARK KNIGHT RISES’ Hardy and written/directed by Stephen ‘PEAKY BLINDERS’ Knight; in a nutshell LOCKE was a beardy Tom Hardy cruising around in a BMW X5 and was praised by the press as ‘suspenseful’ and a ‘Tour de Force’. If it passed you by then I would recommend seeking it out on Netflix or the like, with the following caveat… it is unequivocally not THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS or it’s subsequent six superfluous sequels, despite the potentially explosive and action-packed actor/director tag team of Hardy and Knight.
It is, in fact, a chamber film; 84 minutes of Hardy in his BMW driving down the M6, his life unravelling as he receives various phone calls from his wife, his children, his co-workers and his boss. It’s an utterly compelling, dialogue-driven, one-man show which is expertly performed by Hardy and bravely directed by Knight. However, I’m a little ashamed to admit that throughout LOCKE I just couldn’t help thinking of MARION AND GEOFF. That brilliant televisual mockumentary had the same camera-in-the-car, one location thang going on, just a more comedic slant and a slightly less photogenic star, Rob ‘Small Man Trapped in a Box’ Brydon, playing a romantically naïve taxi driver.
So this premise has been plundered potently for both drama and comedy already. Nevertheless, and speaking of potency, Peter ‘Garlic Bread’ Kay brings us CAR SHARE, a comedy that is, you guessed it, set in a car and features an incident early on in which Kay’s character John is covered in “sweet and sour” smelling urine. Potent indeed. But how did we get to this point? Well, the first episode opens with John zooming around in his Fiat 50oL becoming increasingly vexed by the lady on the Sat Nav, eloquently rebuking her, “you’re off your tits!”; he’s trying to locate the home of Supermarket colleague Kayleigh (Sian Gibson), with whom he will share lifts to work for the foreseeable future. Within moments of getting in John’s car Kayleigh manages to squirt the aforementioned urine over John’s shirt, from a sports water bottle that she is using as a container for her sample. It’s a somewhat contrived moment that had me wincing but luckily CAR SHARE gets funny from then on.
Peter Kay has a talent for mining the mundane and in his superlative stand- up routine he gets his laughs by ridiculing the relatable, whether it be garlic bread, hobnobs or the t’internet. And this is where CAR SHARE’s strengths lie. After the gross-out humour of the urine incident, the rest of the episode is awash with relatable, witty small talk between John and Kayleigh as they travel to and from work, performed with an easy chemistry between Kay and Gibson. I particularly chortled when Kayleigh performed her Cilla Black impression, nasal and Scouse, then followed it with her almost identical Miss Piggy impression. The dichotomy of their characters, John seems inherently world-weary while Kayleigh is obliviously cheery, adds a difference of opinion that fuels the subtly funny chit chat throughout. The car stereo is tuned into Forever FM which plays monstrously cheesetastic Pop that Kayleigh (and occasionally, begrudgingly John) likes to warble along to. This leads to a bizarre dream sequence at the denouement, where Kayleigh is transformed into Pop Star Anastacia and sings her 90’s hit ‘I’m Outta Love’. Weird but funny.
So, we’ve established that the camera-in-the-car premise isn’t particularly innovative, one may wonder whether Kay has seen LOCKE or MARION AND GEOFF, and we’ve also established that CAR SHARE is in no way a departure from Kay’s usual shtick. However, it just works. He has a legion of fans and there is no doubt that they will love this show… but I would encourage Kay-sceptics to give it a test drive too (sorry, I couldn’t resist just one pun); you might get sucked into CAR SHARE’s wit and charm.
PETER KAY’S CAR SHARE, Episode 1, airs on BBC One at 9.30pm Wednesday 29th April.
