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Tim Vine Travels In Time is the first in a new series of BBC1’s Comedy Playhouse and it has all the style of an explosion in a paint factory.
Talking direct to the camera, albeit pretending to speak to a canned laughter audience, he’s running Tim’s Antiques and the celebrity he gets to open it is the idiot from Breakfast who appeared on Strictly Come Dancing… so it’s the BBC promoting itself yet again (Ore Oduba, if you cared).
If Mr Vine is good at one thing, it’s making puns, but here, they’re dragged down by waiting for the man to mug to camera after each one while he waits for the fake audience to laugh.
Things didn’t improve when he travelled back in time to Nottingham, 1205, and the time of Robin Hood (played by the aforementioned idiot), but the puns were less puns and more a case of very poor wordplay. It was like a very poor children’s TV show at which even youngsters would turn up their noses.
For marks out of 10, I can only give the lovely Mandeep Dhillon one (yes, I can do the jokes, too) as Vague Marian (yes, not Maid Marian, but she was a bit unsure in his answers, hence… yes, you’re there already. That’s as good as this dross got, so you needn’t bother watching it).
Tim Vine Travels In Time isn’t available to pre-order on DVD and is unlikely to be. If you missed it, you can watch it on BBC iPlayer for 30 days after transmission.
Score: 1/10
Director: Barbara Wiltshire
Producer: John Pocock
Writers: Tim Vine and John Archer
Cast:
Himself: Tim Vine
Robin Hood: Ore Oduba
Maid Marion: Sally Phillips
The Sheriff of Nottingham: Tim Key
Friar Tuck: Spencer Jones
Vague Marion: Mandeep Dhillon
Al: Kayode Ewumi
Glen: Marek Larwood
Little John: John Archer
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.