WALKEN BACK TO HAPPINESS (THE OUTLAWS)

You've got to hand it to Stephen Merchant.

If you've got some pull in Hollywood, you may as well use it.

And that's what Merchant has done with his six part comedy drama 'The Outlaws'.

Otherwise, how would BBC1 ever hope to get Christopher Walken to take on a role in a primetime TV comedy drama set in Bristol?

'The Outlaws' is actually a BBC1 and Amazon Prime co-production which sees Merchant and Elgin James team up for a story about six offenders doing community service in red bibs with their supervisor.

Merchant plays a lonely, bumbling solicitor, Greg who gets caught in his car with a prostitute after the breakdown of his marriage and who makes the situation worse by trying to escape and crashing into a police vehicle.

Walken is a seventysomething ex con originally from the US who is released from prison for passing dodgy checks and is forced to live with his estranged daughter, Dolly Wells' Margaret and her two children, Guillermo Bedward's Tom and Isla Gie's Holly while wearing an ankle tag.

Eleanor Thompson's Lady Gabby, a social media influencer with a drug habit whose father is Richard E Grant's The Earl, is on community service because of her tendency to fly into a rage and for keying her ex-girlfriend's car.

Clare Perkins' Myrna is a radical left wing activist who has alienated herself from her sister and her fellow campaigners by towing a police recruitment stand through Bristol city centre and haranguing the cops inside about institutional racism.

Darren Boyd's right wing businessman John has wound up on the programme for speeding and is struggling to keep the family firm afloat while trying to negotiate a buyout by Chinese investors.

John is also desperate for the approval of his domineering Belfast born father, Ian McElhinney's John Sr.

Rhianne Bereto's A grade student Rani has been caught shoplifting - a clear act of rebellion against her overbearing parents, Nina Wadia's Shanthi and her Polish dad, Gyuri Sarossy's Jerzy.

Completing the group is Gamba Cole's Christian, a young man looking after his bright sister Aiyana Goodfellow's Esme.

Christian is determined to keep Esme away from the influence of a drug gang in their block of flats headed by Charles Babaloa's Malaki and recruits Rani to help her study for a Maths GCSE in the hope that education will offer a path to a better life.

Their supervisor, Jessica Gunning's Diane is a graduate of the community service programme who loves the authority she has been given and dreams of becoming a cop despite having a criminal record that may thwart that ambition.

Christian's efforts to resist Malaki exerting influence over Esme is what propels Merchant and James' show.

Desperate to keep Esme out of trouble, he reluctantly agrees to take part in an armed raid on a house of junkies for Malaki.

The objective is to swipe a mobile phone.

However he ends up taking a holdall full of cash as well.

Rani, who has befriended him on the community service program, realises he has been sucked into committing a criminal act and drives her father's plumbing van to the scene - hoping to deter or help him.

As the raid goes off piste, the vehicle she is driving is filmed by the junkies and is also captured on CCTV straying into the incident and enabling Christian to get away on foot.

This puts her in immediate danger because the cash belongs to Claes Bang's London gangland figure The Dean who leans on Malaki to find out where it has gone.

Christian hides the money in the hall where they are doing community service, only for Frank, Myrna and John to accidentally stumble upon it.

Will Frank, Myrna and John split the money between them and let the others know about their discovery?

Will Diane uncover the truth about the cash and Christian's involvement in stealing it?

Or will Malaki track down Christian and Rani and force them to recover the cash?

The task facing Merchant, James and their team of writers with 'The Outlaws' is a tricky one.

How do you convincingly fuse an ensemble comedy about low grade offenders with the more darker storyline about a criminal gang desperate to do whatever it takes to recover the money?

The show's creators and their fellow writers Dolly Wells, Emma Jane Unsworth and Nikita Lakwani take on the challenge with great enthusiasm, as does John Butler who shares directorial duties with Merchant.

However the end result is a comedy drama that elicits an occasional laugh but rarely ventures beyond being amiable.

Merchant and his fellow writers trade in broad brush stereotypes throughout - the honest kid reluctantly drawn into crime because of circumstance, the good girl rebel, a right wing and a left wing blowhard, the errant, unreliable grandfather, the incompetent, lonely solicitor and the angry socialite.

And very often the dialogue reflects this sweeping approach.

When it does embrace its darker themes - well, let's put it this way: it's hardly Bristol's answer to 'The Wire'.

It mostly feels half tank - as if the writers are unsure about getting too dark.

With a script as hesitant as this, some members of the cast fare better than others and interestingly, it is the least well known.

Cole, Barretto, Goodfellow and Babaloa attack their roles with gusto, while Gunning has some of the best lines as Diane who has some David Brent traits that can amuse but also irritate.

Tom Hanson does a decent enough job too as Spencer, Greg's sneering colleague at his law firm.

However Merchant, Grant, Bang, Wells, McElhinney and Wadia are left to crunch through stock roles.

Perkins and Tomlinson do likewise.

Grace Calder and Kojo Kamara also trot out stereotypical British detective roles and Sam Troughton pops up as Diane's boss, Mr Wilder making little impact.

None of the performances are bad - they are just middling.

But the writing gives the cast of 'The Outlaws' very little to thrive upon.

And while it is amusing to see Walken far away from his natural habitat, it feels his talents are being wasted on a character who sort of floats about on the edges.

Having him sing The Pussycat Dolls' 'Don't Cha' in a karaoke session in a Bristol pub is all well and good but is it really top notch comedy? 

Of the better known members of the cast Darren Boyd probably does the best, somehow managing to breathe life into character who otherwise feels like he has been plucked straight out of GB News and is handed predictable, chest pounding Daily Mail style speeches.

It has to be acknowledged that over the course of the show's six episodes, Merchant manages to keep you watching and he ends the show with an attention grabbing moment, with Walken getting to destroy a real mural by Bristol's other well known son, Banksy.

However you end up watching in the hope that 'The Outlaws' would deliver a lot more than it appears to be capable of.

As it saunters towards its rather underwhelming conclusion, you cannot help suspecting this is a bland show with a bit of an identity crisis.

It is too skittish to be a decent thriller and it is too flirtatious with half herted social commentary to be an effective comedy.

Merchant and James need to shake up the formula in the second series.

But do they have the desire and the guts?

('The Outlaws' was broadcast on BBC1 from October 18-November 22, 2021)

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