Posted on July 11, 2008 - by MG

Lab Rats – I so wanted it to be good

They finally set a sitcom in a research lab.

The idea is hardly original – I myself submitted a script for a lab sitcom (WHITECOATS) to the BBC and Channel 4 in 2004 only to have it a) rejected and b) ignored, respectively. A German TV producer got excited about it and pitched it to some German TV channel. I never heard from her again…

Well, if the brilliant Richard Herring gets his sitcom ideas rejected by the BBC then a total unknown writer who hasn’t even done the requisite ten years on the comedy circuit is NOT going to get taken seriously. I get that, I even agree. (And of course my script was the work of a screenwriting and comedy novice…)

I wrote WHITECOATS because I wanted to see a sitcom set in a lab. There wasn’t one, so I took a DIY attitude. Luckily for me it didn’t get taken up; I moved on to writing thrillers for children and wound up being paid what I’m guessing is more than a novice TV writer.

So LAB RATS – should have worked for me. I love Chris Addison in “The Thick of It”. He’s sweet and he’s a Manc, like me. I loved Geoffrey Perkins as Ford Prefect in the radio version of “The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy”. I watched both the clips released prior to the show’s airing and laughed out loud.

But I’m afraid I watched with dismay yesterday. I’m not going to tear it apart – too many TV reviewers are doing that. I AM going to keep watching, but from such a beginning I don’t see that it ever reach any decent height. Unless they rejig the formula radically as was done with “Men Behaving Badly”.

The best thing I can say is that it’s sort of Goodies humour, but the Goodies has dated too. And the other thing I can say is that some of their conversations, sad and geeky though they were, are not far from the stupid kinds of things I remember we did talk about when I worked in a lab. The two clips of LAB RATS that made me laugh are here.

Okay, I’ve criticised another writer. Now I’ll offer myself up for the same treatment. Here is a snifter of my pilot script for WHITECOATS – the four-scene sample I entered in the BBC New Talent contest. Obviously I didn’t get anywhere or else I would never have written The Joshua Files.