The Walshes fails to match its credentials

Down through the years we have witnessed many bad home-produced comedies and we assumed that the situation could not get any worse.

Then along come The Walshes which is shown on RTE 1 at a time which one would hope that everyone is in bed by then. It is chronic viewing.

It comes with credentials in that it is written by Graham Lenihan who scripted Father Ted but it is dire to say the least. It does not generate even one moment of laughter.

There is one similarity, however, in that the writer found it necessary to create another Father Dougal character for this series but it simply is not working.

The so-called comedy is set in Dublin and involves a taxi driver and his wife who have two grown up children who are living in the homestead.

The daughter has a boyfriend who has just moved in while the son is in his mid-twenties but acts like a giddy teenager. This is where the Father Dougal similarity kicks in. But it is a bit too obvious given who wrote the script.

 It doesn’t come much worse than this. It is like having Twink back trying to be funny when she never had a humorous bone in her body. Her own laugh sadly tried to generate humour which it failed to do.

Then we have Brendan O’Carroll who has amazingly found success with Mrs Browne’s Boys which is nearly as bad as this effort. Actually it is between them to determine which is worse.

And now we have The Walshes which is a terrible attempt at humour and thankfully it is only three episodes. Anything more would be an ordeal.

It could not generate a smile if a gun was put to your face. The acting is terrible, the characters are even worse and it has nothing going for it.

There have been many bad comedies produced in this country in the past but this ranks amongst the top of all that is awful. It really should not have seen the light of day.

It centres around a suburban family in Dublin. Maybe the scriptwriters had an eye on The Royle Family when they came up with the idea but it would not lace its boots in that department. This is the ultimate in a comedy howler.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Sentinel.