The Outlaws
BBC1, Monday
The Long Call
ITV Monday-Thursday
Stephen Merchant’s new series, The Outlaws, had been billed as a drama-comedy, a ‘dramady’, so I was not anticipating its tonal swerve at the end into thriller territory, which now makes it what exactly?
A thramady I can’t think of any thramadies I’ve seen before, so it’s new in that respect, but otherwise it all felt quite 1974. You wondered if Merchant had seen The Office before, but it’s likely he has, since he co-wrote it.
This is a group piece that brings together characters from different backgrounds.

The new series from Stephen Merchant (above, with Clare Perkins and Eleanor Tomlinson), The Outlaws, had been billed as a drama-comedy, a ‘dramady’
It has a fantastic cast, including, unsurprisingly, Christopher Walken. His hair also deserves separate billing.
He plays a shifty old fraudster while the other miscreants include a studious Asian girl (Rhianne Barreto), a Right-wing businessman always railing about ‘Lefties’ and ‘PC gone mad’ (Darren Boyd), a militant socialist feminist (Clare Perkins), a super-posh aristocratic influencer (Eleanor Tomlinson), a bad black boy with a heart of gold (Charles Babalola) and an awkward, tall, Bristolian type (Stephen Merchant playing Stephen Merchant).
It all felt horribly out of date. There were also racial stereotypes. Rani, the studious Asian girl, has a Goodness Gracious Me- type mother while her father (or stepfather, it’s not yet clear) is a nasty brute from Eastern Europe, and as for the black boy, he is necessarily involved in gangs.
I waited for Merchant to pull the rug out under my feet and subvert all the nonsense. But, at least in the first episode, the rug stayed put.
This comedy did not have the naturalist, handheld feel that most modern comedies have since The Office. It has a stilted, sitcom-like feel, where nothing is even remotely believable, while Walken was distracting. (Why Christopher, Christopher?
Some of the jokes were also older than me, and I am quite old. ‘I have library books that have been out more than me,’ says Rani about her sad social life. One joke made me smile.
It’s when someone asks Eleanor Tomlinson’s character what her last servant died of and she says, in all seriousness: ‘I think it was old age.’
The drama aspect felt second-hand, too. That tonal swerve into gritty thriller territory, for example, is everything you’ve ever seen in Top Boy, while Darren Boyd’s storyline put me in mind of Tom Wilkinson’s character in The Full Monty, who also pretended to his wife that all was going great guns at work.
However, Boyd was a remarkable character, despite all of this. His was the only character that I felt anything for at its end. But, overall, I’m going to have to conclude that thramadies aren’t really my thing.
The Long Call is an adaptation of the Ann Cleeves book, made by the same people who adapted her other books, Vera and Shetland, which have become TV stalwarts. Our hero on this outing is DI Matthew Venn, who is gay and married, which is a first for police procedurals – why has it taken so long? – but otherwise it was pretty much business as usual.

It’s set in Devon (Ilfracombe), where DI Matthew Venn has a sidekick, DC Jen Rafferty (Pearl Mackie, above with Ben Aldridge), also a harassed single mother
From the opening drone shots of the sea, you knew you were in Broadchurch-ian territory and prayed it wasn’t going to be a sub-Broadchurch-ian affair, but that, I’m afraid, is what it was.
It’s set in Devon (Ilfracombe), where Venn has a sidekick, DC Jen Rafferty (Pearl Mackie), also a harassed single mother, but if there is any chemistry between the two I did not sense it.
A man found dead on the beach. At first, they thought he might have been struck by a propeller at sea. This made me wonder about their police abilities. He’s bone dry! His pocket has a letter that is bone dry. Let me get out of your way!
Soon everyone in the community comes under suspicion, and they all have their dark secrets but, unlike Broadchurch, this didn’t allow its characters to live and breathe, so they always felt like ciphers, not people you could care about.
Plus, as I was suspect in a case, I ended up with Red Herring Fatigue.
Venn is naturally haunted by childhood trauma. This is because Venn was raised in the Barum Brethren (an evangelical sect) and was later expelled as a teenager for their homophobia.
Members of the Brethren were played by Juliet Stevenson, Martin Shaw and Anita Dobson, who are all terrific actors, but even they couldn’t surmount the material. Which isn’t to say I didn’t enjoy Dobson over-acting like mad by episode three, as I rather did.
It was almost compelling.
Venn is a dull person. I wanted Venn to have a problem with alcohol or a poor home life. I have never been able to figure out why it was called The Long Call.
However, given its slow pace over four nights, maybe it should have been The Long, Long, Long Call.