The signs were never good for Piglets, ITV’s newest police trainee sitcom.
The trailer was cringeworthy. In the weeks before it aired, the show was lambasted by the police for its title. Tiffany Lynch, acting chair of the Police Federation for England and Wales, even called it “disgusting” for the way it used the police slur ‘pig’ in a comedy setting.
ITV have since said that it wasn’t meant to offend, but to be honest, the show offers absolutely nothing in any of its six episodes to redeem itself. I don’t say these words lightly, but here they are: don’t bother watching.
The premise is simple. Six recruits at a police training academy are put through their paces while also battling their rank incompetence.
I say recruits; they’re more trope than human. There’s Callie Cooke’s Steph, the ditzy bimbo hung up on her ex. There’s Paul (Jamie Bisping), a criminally stupid narc for his drug-dealing family. There’s Abdul Sessay as Dev, who has a penchant for wearing women’s underwear… oh why bother.
As the series progresses, we’re also introduced to a depressingly unlikeable bunch of senior staff, too. Is Rebecca Humphries’ painfully aggressive/ horny secretary Melanie the most unlikable? No, that accolade may have to go to Mark Heap, whose Superintendent Bob Weekes occupies the corner of every scene like an energy draining vampire.
For a sitcom, jokes are, of course, a requirement. These jokes aren’t funny, and it’s honestly a bit insulting that the script thinks the viewers will think they are.
Primary school-level toilet humour abounds, as do the bad puns. Barring a weak chuckle, lines like “I’m signing up for cheese club… it’s chess, Paul” are both depressingly predictable and also just plain depressing.
The same goes for the plot – or what little exists of it. Much of the action in the six episodes is devoted to finding the “prune in the nest” (aka the mole) – and yet, however obvious Paul is being in his supposed sleuthing, nobody seems to suspect a thing.
In fact, the show takes the opportunity to lean even further into grim, wince-inducing humour when an officer finds him stealing a flash drive… and accuses him of sneaking off to masturbate. Sigh. Whose idea was this again?
The one saving grace of this show is quite possibly Sarah Parish, who plays Superintendent Julie Spry and manages to coax a few moments of levity out of the script. The rest of it is just criminal: lock it up and throw away the key.
