British sitcom
A British sitcom or a Britcom is a situational comedy programme produced for British television.
Most British sitcoms are recorded on studio sets, while some have an element of location filming. A handful are made almost exclusively on location ...
which was shown on
BBC Three
BBC Three is a British free-to-air public broadcast television channel owned and operated by the BBC. It was first launched on 9 February 2003 with programmes targeting 16 to 34-year-olds, covering all genres including animation, comedy, cur ...
in 2012.
Writing
The writers,
Sharon Horgan
Sharon Lorencia Horgan (born 13 July 1970) is an Irish actress, writer, director, comedian and producer who co-wrote and starred in the comedy series '' Pulling'' (2006–2009) and ''Catastrophe'' (2015–2019). She also created the HBO comedy ...
and
Holly Walsh
Holly Dione Walsh (born 8 November 1980) is an English comedian and comedy writer.
Early life
The daughter of an Anglican vicar, Walsh attended Christ's Hospital School, before going on to read History of Art at Gonville and Caius College, Cam ...
met through Jo Caulfield, a stand-up comedian who had a show on Radio 4. Horgan and Walsh both worked on the show, Horgan as an actress, and Walsh as a writer. It was Horgan who thought of writing a sitcom based on someone stuck in prison for a crime they did not commit. She asked Walsh if she wanted to work on it with her and the process from conception to broadcast took over two and a half years.
Regular characters
*
Sharon Horgan
Sharon Lorencia Horgan (born 13 July 1970) is an Irish actress, writer, director, comedian and producer who co-wrote and starred in the comedy series '' Pulling'' (2006–2009) and ''Catastrophe'' (2015–2019). She also created the HBO comedy ...
– as Helen Stephens
*
Jennifer Saunders
Jennifer Jane Saunders (born 6 July 1958) is an English actress, comedian, singer and screenwriter. Saunders originally found attention in the 1980s, when she became a member of The Comic Strip after graduating from the Royal Central School of ...
– as
Governor
A governor is an administrative leader and head of a polity or political region, ranking under the head of state and in some cases, such as governors-general, as the head of state's official representative. Depending on the type of political ...
Margaret
*
Bryony Hannah
Bryony Hannah (born 1984) is a British actress, best known as Cynthia Miller in BBC One's '' Call the Midwife''.
Personal life
The daughter of a teacher and a retired Royal Navy lieutenant-commander, Hannah comes from Portsmouth, and after leavi ...
– as Christine
*
Geoffrey McGivern
Geoffrey M. McGivern is a British actor in film, radio, stage and television, as well as a comedian.
Career
He played Ford Prefect in the radio series (1978–80) and subsequent LP releases of ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'' by Dougla ...
– as Tony
*
Tom Goodman-Hill
Tom Goodman-Hill is an English actor of film, television, theatre and radio.
Early life
Brought up near Newcastle upon Tyne, he qualified as a teacher before turning to acting. During his time in Newcastle, he regularly acted in amateur perform ...
– as Tim
*
Lizzie Roper
Lizzie Roper (born 1967) is a British actress.
Career
Trained at the Guildford School of Acting after gaining a degree in drama from Aberystwyth University. Lizzie fell into Comedy whilst performing with Lenny Beige at The Regency Rooms as Sad ...
– as Top Dog
*
Aisling Bea
Aisling Clíodhnadh O'Sullivan (born 16 March 1984), known professionally as Aisling Bea ( ), is an Irish comedian, actor and writer. She created, wrote and starred in the comedy series '' This Way Up'' on Channel 4. As a stand-up comedian, she ...
– as Laura Stephens
*
Amanda Lawrence
Amanda Lawrence is a British stage, film, and television actress.
Lawrence studied theatre at Bretton Hall College and worked early in her career in the Edinburgh Fringe.Edward Hogg – as Henry
* Ricky Champ – as Frank
*
Emma Pierson
Emma Jane Pierson (born 30 April 1981) is an English actress. Her appearances in television programmes include the role of Anna Thornton-Wilton in the BBC television drama '' Hotel Babylon'', and '' SunTrap'', '' Days Like These'', '' Beast ...
The series ended with many unresolved sub-plots and Helen no nearer to being released. For example, her former fiancé has still not visited her in prison, nor explained his disappearance. We do not know what happened to the winning lottery money, why Helen's boss needed a forged passport, nor who is the owner of the body in the storage locker that we see in the final few minutes of episode 6.
Reception
The series received mixed reviews. It holds a rating of 6.7/10 at the
Internet Movie Database
IMDb (an abbreviation of Internet Movie Database) is an online database of information related to films, television series, home videos, video games, and streaming content online – including cast, production crew and personal biographies, ...
. Terry Ramsey of
The Daily Telegraph
''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a national British daily broadsheet newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed across the United Kingdom and internationally.
It was f ...
gave the series a rating of 3.5/5 and stating that "at the start, this looked like another trying-hard-to-be-wacky-without-actually-being-very-funny BBC Three comedy, but by halfway through the first episode it got into its stride, with succinct characterisation, sly humour and a winning main character. On top of the humour there’s a murder mystery developing, plus a fine cameo role by Jennifer Saunders as the prison governor. I watched the second instalment that followed, and really enjoyed it. I can’t stop now, and am desperate for another episode." Jack Seale of
The Radio Times
''Radio Times'' (currently styled as ''RadioTimes'') is a British weekly listings magazine devoted to television and radio programme schedules, with other features such as interviews, film reviews and lifestyle items. Founded in May 1923 by J ...
gave the series a negative review, saying "Popular as it now is, this "everyone except the main character is a loon" approach feels like a way to con us out of the 3D creations that are hard to write but keep us coming back. Dead Boss also has an ongoing story arc – again this is in vogue at the expense of giving each episode a tight, resolved plot. You wonder whether this is really because it works better or because writers have lost the knack of setting two or three stories running and then reining them in again 28 minutes later. The story of who really killed Helen's boss is too silly to be believable, but not silly enough for that to stop mattering. Nothing in Dead Boss feels like it actually exists. If a joke falls flat, it's hard to ignore because there's nothing else there. Of course it's possible to do comedy that doesn't have any truth or soul if the jokes are outlandishly good but, despite a superb cast, Dead Boss struggles to reinvent incompetent lawyers, meat-headed screws and disgusting prison food. Horgan and new writing partner Holly Walsh's gags don't have their own fresh voice: episode two had a creaking crack at wordplay involving the phrase "plan B" and the words "you" and "see"; a scene where Helen's absurdly creepy stalker had been masturbating in his office led exactly where you thought it might. Pulling had heart and guts. Dead Boss feels hollow." A negative review from Sam Wollaston, where she said that "this was pretty lame – and tame – in comparison. I wanted to like it, but couldn't. So I ignored it. Perhaps it needed time to bed in (pah!), and would get into its stride in week two. I told myself I was giving it a chance by deferring judgment, when of course I was really simply bottling it." Ket Watson of the Metro gave a negative review, in which he stated that "Dead Boss was enticing enough with its stellar cast, excellent writing credentials and intriguing premise, but in the event, this début episode was more Dead Loss than anything else." He also said that "Throttled by a cast of supporting characters cobbled together from left over bits of Psychoville and Prisoner Cell Block H, Dead Boss boasted bonkers eccentricity by the slop-out bucketload but none of it felt remotely original", and "At the centre of it all there’s Horgan, working her socks off as the 'normal' one. But she’s fighting a losing battle, because the script is a bit of a stinker – and she co-wrote it. This is hard to admit for a Horgan fan but thus far Dead Boss is a bit of a dead loss."