The Wrong Mans is a BBC Television comedy drama series, co-produced with
the American online television provider Hulu. It premiered on BBC Two on 24
September 2013 and in the United States on 11 November 2013. Considered a
critical and ratings success, it was co-created and written by Gavin & Stacey
alumni James Corden and Mathew Baynton as an attempt to combine the situation
comedy format with the intricate plotting and storytelling tropes of an
action-adventure series. An equally successful two-part sequel
series aired on BBC Two in the runup to Christmas 2014, with Hulu debuting the
same series in four parts on Christmas Eve.
Plot Berkshire County Council worker Sam
Pinkett and Phil Bourne who doesn't work for the council and just works inside
the building, abruptly become entangled in a far-fetched – but deadly serious –
web of crime, conspiracy and corruption after Sam answers a ringing phone at the
site of a car crash. Cast
Mathew Baynton as Sam Pinkett James Corden as Phil Bourne
Sarah Solemani as Lizzie Green Tom Basden as Noel Ward
Paul Cawley as Alan Chandeep Uppal as Sabrina
Dawn French as Linda Bourne Nick Moran as Nick Stevens
Emilia Fox as Scarlett Stevens David Calder as Mr. Reid
Benedict Wong as Mr Lau Andrew Koji as Jason Lau
Christina Chong as May Wu Dougray Scott as Agent Jack Walker
Stephen Campbell Moore as Paul Smoke Karel Roden as Marat Malankovic
Duncan Pow as Petr Alec Utgoff as Yuri
Rebecca Front as Cox Bertie Carvel as Nathan Cross
Trevor Cooper as Guard Harry Rowena King as Wood
Production On 9 October 2012, BBC Two controller
Janice Hadlow announced The Wrong Mans as a co-production between BBC In-House
Comedy and Hulu. The series was commissioned by Janice Hadlow and Cheryl
Taylor. A pilot based on Baynton and Corden's initial series pitch had
previously been shot in 2010; some elements were retained for what
eventually became the first episode of the full series, including a
pre-Homeland cameo from David Harewood. Principal filming on the series began in
January 2013, at the same time as the cast was announced. Jeremy Dyson was the
script editor for the series. The idea for the series initially arose
out of a conversation between Corden and Baynton on the set of Gavin and Stacey,
four years earlier, regarding the apparent scarcity of TV sitcoms with the
same level of intricate, meaningful plotting as then-current dramatic hits
24 and Lost. As a starting-point for their own half-hour comedy show pitch to
the BBC, the duo were further inspired by the Coen Brothers' film Burn After
Reading, with its central concept of ordinary characters obviously out of
their depth in a standard action-movie scenario. The humour in their new TV
series, Baynton and Corden decided, would arise not so much from deliberate
jokes as from the sheer realistic ineptitude of the heroes' attempts to
cope with a high-stakes melodrama constantly snowballing further out of
their control. Once they began actually writing the
series, the two quickly realised this would mean carrying through a much more
ambitious project than they had anticipated, eventually leading to a
significant amount of effort spent attempting to work out a believably
complex, well-paced thriller plot. Producer/director Jim Field Smith
described the result as a "movie broken into six parts", and in filming aimed
for a likewise ambitious fusion of the realistic and cinematic, insisting that
the thriller elements be played entirely straight.
Regarding the apparently awkward title, Corden explained that the extra and
ungrammatical "s" was deliberately placed "to let you know it's a comedy
show. If it was a drama, it'd be called The Wrong Man."
Despite the first series' apparently self-contained storyline, as of the
midpoint of its initial airing, BBC executives had already confirmed that
"there is a desire to bring it back and discussions are ongoing". Immediately
post-finale, both co-creators and Field Smith confirmed their interest in
returning, on Twitter and during media appearances. Baynton said in an
interview shortly thereafter that they had come up with what they thought was a
plausible way to continue the same duo's adventures for a second series. In
February 2014, Baynton said that he and Corden had finished plotting the new
series and were about to start work on the scripts. In April 2014, BBC Two
officially announced that a second series had been commissioned.
Filming began on the new series in August 2014, with Field Smith returning
as producer/director. The new plotline was conceived as a direct continuation
of the events of the first, using a deliberately hanging plot thread--the
bomb seen planted under a car in the final shot--as the starting-point in a
storyline that charted the duo's equally outlandish attempts to reclaim their
ordinary lives. Describing their efforts in comparison to the original, Corden
and Baynton reiterated that "this new series is bigger and bolder... If series
one was the frying pan, this is the fire." Other returning cast members
include Dawn French, Rebecca Front, Sarah Solemani and Tom Basden, all
reprising their roles from the first series. BBC Two scheduled the new series
as part of their 2014 Christmas programming line-up, running the
episodes in two hour-long blocks successively on 22 and 23 December. The
same episodes broken into four half-hours subsequently premiered on
Hulu.com on 24 December. Episode list
= Series 1= = Series 2=
Reception = Ratings=
Overnight figures showed that the first episode was watched by 13.5% of the UK
viewing audience at the time, or 3.08 million, making it BBC Two's most
successful comedy debut since Extras eight years previously. Consolidated
audience was 4.5 million, or 16%. Series consolidated viewing average was 3.3
million viewers or 12%, while the Sunday 10pm repeat averaged 494,000/2%.
In the US, Hulu initially launched the series by making either the first two
episodes available to regular subscribers with one episode
subsequently released each week, or all six immediately available to Hulu Plus
subscribers. CEO Mike Hopkins confirmed that each episode ranked among the ten
most-watched on the online service upon weekly release.
= Critical response= Initial UK reviews for the series were
generally positive. It was ranked #5 in Radio Times' annual critics' Top 40 TV
series for 2013 and the first episode was an iTunes UK Editor's Choice as the
same year's Best TV Episode. On making its Hulu debut, the show received an
aggregate score of 80/100 from Metacritic based on seven major reviews,
placing it in the top ten highest-rated series of the US fall season.
Praise for the "darkly comic caper", as Keith Watson described it for Metro,
centred around both the moody, heavily stylised visual feel of the overall
production and the contrasting comic chemistry between its two leads. "The
mismatched buddy dynamic between the pair – nerdy, neurotic everyman and
chubby gung-ho sidekick – was reminiscent of the Simon Pegg/Nick Frost
Britcoms or a Coen Brothers flick," wrote Michael Hogan in The Daily
Telegraph. Ellen Jones from The Independent said: "Thanks to slick
direction and, one suspects, a large chunk of the BBC's autumn budget, it
certainly looks as good as a Hollywood thriller."
Veteran TV writer Clive James of The Daily Telegraph said The Wrong Mans is
"highly recognisable, as if it had been designed to fulfill all the requirements
of British screen comedy... Remember Morecambe and Wise on the Riviera? This
is the same thing, but better done. Having watched one episode, I vowed to
watch another: instead of, as I usually do when a British comedy series is
concerned, vowing to emigrate back to Australia."
Writing for the entertainment website HitFix, American veteran reviewer Alan
Sepinwall noted that "I expected to be tired of the joke behind "The Wrong
Mans" within an episode or two. Instead, I found myself engrossed enough in the
story of who wanted Sam dead at any particular moment, and why, to keep
watching until I made it all the way to the end and could appreciate just how
well Baynton, Corden and company stuck the landing."
Several reviewers nevertheless felt the show's attempt to seamlessly mesh the
comedy and thriller genres wasn't entirely successful, including Rachel
Cooke in the New Statesman, who wrote that "I didn’t hate it... but all the
same, I’m not sure that it quite works. Thirty minutes seems too short a time to
accommodate both the tropes of a thriller and a tonne of jokes. I think
they should have given themselves an hour, the better that the audience might
get its ear in.". Sam Wollaston in The Guardian wrote that he was "not
convinced" by the series' tone, "nor that performers necessarily make the
best writers. Oh, and what's with that title? There's something wrong with it,
isn't there? Grammatically?" = Awards and nominations=
Baynton and Corden, with Tom Basden, won a 2013 Royal Television Society
Programme Award for Best Writer – Comedy. Baynton and Corden also received
a BAFTA TV Craft Award nomination in the same category, and both were also
nominated for Best Male Performance in a Comedy Programme in the same year's
BAFTA Television Awards. Home media
DVD and Blu-ray Disc editions of the first series were released in the UK on
4 November 2013. The second series was released onto DVD in the UK on 26
January 2015. A boxset containing the first and second
series of The Wrong Mans was also released in the UK on 26 January 2015.
References External links
The Wrong Mans at BBC Programmes The Wrong Mans at the Internet Movie
Database The Wrong Mans at Radio Times
The Wrong Mans at the British Comedy Guide
The Wrong Mans at Hulu Behind the scenes pictures