Dylan Moran returns to TV on this fast-paced marriage comedy

Caught ★★★

Dylan Moran as a grouchy, scruffy man-child dealing with a midlife existential disaster? Black Books followers might be excited, however on this fast-paced collection (every episode is barely quarter-hour lengthy), Moran is taking part in a person with a minimum of some interpersonal abilities.

He’s Dan, a middle-aged promoting govt in a long-term relationship with Carla (Morgana Robinson, who performed Pippa Middleton in The Windsors), who works in some sort of nebulous-sounding wellness enterprise (a profitable one, albeit). They’ve evidently been collectively for a while, however there’s little time for exposition right here; we’re spared their backstory and thrown straight into the midst of this relationship. They’re one thing of an odd match; she’s a minimum of a decade youthful than Dan, outgoing, and a little bit of a kooky new-age sort (though it’s Dan who’s the vegan within the relationship) and he’s extra weary and snarky. Extra … Dylan Moran.

However they sort of make a plausible couple as they bicker good-naturedly in the way in which anybody in a long-term relationship will recognise, with in-joke shorthand and gags about Dan’s age and burgeoning man-boobs. They appear completely happy, however Carla thinks it’s time they bought a nicer flat and presumably also have a child – or a minimum of get a cat. However Dan, regardless of his age, is seemingly in no hurry.

After which Carla’s plans look to be scuppered when Dan loses his job on the promoting company. He was as soon as a hot-shot within the enterprise, however as his boss tells him, “that was a very long time in the past”. Discovering himself all of a sudden unemployed at 50, Moran schleps round half-heartedly in quest of a job, and entrusts his physician mate Pete (Peaky Blinders′ Neil Maskell) to try to double his severance pay in poker video games, whereas begging Pete to prescribe him some “completely happy capsules”.

In the meantime Carla’s job is all of a sudden rather a lot busier, due to some sort of life-style quiz. She works for Pleasure (Juliet Cowan), who, regardless of her wellness model and her German life-style coach husband Kurt ( Clemens Schick), is usually a jittery mess. Dan, cautious of Kurt, nonetheless makes an attempt to comply with a few of his self-help on-line movies, by which he seems in entrance of a blue sky sporting a polo-neck jumper and an earnest expression. Kurt is a spotlight of the collection.

Then Carla’s ex Maya (Eleanor Fanyinka), a glamorous, profitable singer, exhibits up out of the blue. All of a sudden Dan, who has taken to moping across the flat in his underwear consuming junk meals, too lazy to prepare dinner dinner, takes discover.

For a collection of solely 5 brief episodes, there’s rather a lot occurring in what are actually little vignettes rooted within the quotidian; whereas Caught could be very a lot Moran’s signature type (he wrote all the collection), it’s extra conventional marriage-based sitcom than Black Books.