Like millions of others, I was a colossal fan of The Inbetweeners back in the day and when I first heard about the concept of this series along with who was writing it, I got very excited. I wasn't going to kid myself - I knew that it was going to be difficult for Iain Morris and Damon Beesley to match the dizzy heights of The Inbetweeners a second time around. However, after watching The First Team, I come away from it feeling rather disappointed. This is a sitcom about a group of young footballers with a lot of time on their hands who find themselves in a multitude of embarrassing situations that threaten to damage their reputations. Unfortunately, it ended up sailing wide of the target.
On paper, The First Team is a very good concept and it's conceivable that you would be able to formulate an amusing sitcom from the potential scenarios available. However, this fails to do so on a number of occasions - the supposed big punchlines of an episode rarely hit the mark or provide any sort of big laugh. The dialogue between the characters seems unnatural with lines often being poorly delivered. And out of the three main characters, there isn't a single one of them that really stands out. For the most part, they're all pretty bland.
The story primarily revolves around Mattie Sullivan; who has just been signed by the club from Sporting Kansas in the MLS. However, no-one seems particularly enthused by his arrival which leaves Mattie confused as to why he was signed. This does lead to some humorous scenes featuring Will Arnett (who was consistently brilliant throughout) - the standout moment being when he tries to erase Mattie's signature by licking his thumb and rubbing it on the contract after he learns that Mattie is not a US international. Apart from that, the comedic moments featuring our protagonist are very few and far between. The rest of the episode feels like a watered down version of Will's first day in The Inbetweeners; with Mattie trying desperately to fit in with a crowd that aren't going to accept him easily. He finds friends in the incredibly shy Jack and Benji; who epitomises the stereotype of a modern day footballer and like I mentioned earlier, none of these characters really bring anything big to the table although Jack did grow on me as the series progressed. Mattie's plotline in this episode culminates in a rather predictable scene with him thinking that the manager is dead when he is in fact just asleep. This was the supposed to be the big set piece of the episode and it didn't provide any laughs.
The quality of the episodes do improve as the series progresses but the standout moments are sporadic to say the least. The episode setups have a lot of potential but they can't seem to extract the humour and as a result, the episodes fall flat. It feels like you're waiting for them to take it up a notch and it just never happens.
On the positive front, Tamla Kari's performance as no-nonsense Head Of Press Olivia Talbot was very impressive; providing the vast majority of the humour when cutting the boys down to size. As previously mentioned, Will Arnett was hilarious in his role as clueless chairman Mark Crane and I felt he was very underused. Arnett was a huge draw for this series so it's possible that he had other commitments but I felt like his character should have been utilised further. Chris Geere was also impressive as the positive-thinking Chris Booth but like Arnett, was also underused throughout the show.
The reason that The Inbetweeners was so successful was because Iain Morris and Damon Beesley stuck religiously to the 'Write About What You Know' concept; pulling multiple stories from their youth and channeling them into incredibly relatable characters that made us all cry with laughter. This is exactly where The First Team falls down. The characters in this show live in a totally different world to the everyday man and as such, the identification of ourselves in these characters has been heavily removed and whilst that doesn't always mean that a show becomes less funny, it has removed a key ingredient of what made Morris and Beesley so successful in the first place.
I don't want to sound like I'm directly comparing it to The Inbetweeners because that would just be unfair but if you're relying on three characters as underwhelming as Mattie, Jack and Benji to carry you through a show, it's always going to be a difficult watch.
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