Bubble UK Review: ITV’s Warren United ”July”

UK television welcomed a new adult animation this week in the form of Warren United, was the show a hat-trick or a disappointing 0-0 draw? Find out below.

 

 

In April, British animators were granted a tax break and many predicted an upsurge in animation on British TV. The first glimpse of this on TV came this week in the shape of new series, Warren United. Can the show fill the huge hole that defines the absence of adult animation on UK TV? I  had really hoped so.

Warren United has a great pedigree on paper. The show is written by Men Behaving Badly scribe, Simon Nye, and stars the brilliantly talented Bafta winner, Darren Boyd (Spy, Four Lions and so much more).In this debut episode we meet football obsessed Warren and his amiable family.

At some point, I’m not sure when, the opening of the show was a wee bit confusing and took a while to realise it’s narrative, Warren decides that a man whose life revolves around the beautiful game is not a man befitting the  21st century. He figures he will be of better use to his family as a renaissance man, all caring, time-giving and DIY making. To achieve this new lifestyle Warren enlists the help of a doctor Frankenstein like “therapist” whose draconian nard-frying methods would never be OKed by the British medical board.

Unsurprisingly, Warren’s transformation is a complete disaster and his family realise his weekend passion for the terraces are a better outlet for his emotions than  shelf building will ever be. By the end of the episode, the titular hero is back in the stadium with his asian stereotype friend  celebrating a glorious 0-0 draw.

Sadly, this story was not one that took any risks for an adult animation, Warren United felt very safe and a little predictable. The script had no surprises, at times there were glimpses of subversion, just when you thought the show might happily shock you it lapsed back into the very safe zone of Saturday night prime-time sitcom style comedy. The writing didn’t really know what it wanted to be, it seemed to settle for  hokey end-of-the-pier family fare when given its 10 pm time slot it could have strayed well away from the norm. Considering we haven’t had a home grown adult animated hit for quite some time this show could have come right out of left field with some American Dad Roger style random and completely got away with it. However, it settled for safe, the same way Full English did. I think Warren United was trying to capture some sense of English-ness that doesn’t really exist anymore. A quick glimpse at the animations on YouTube show our sense of humour to be far more quirky than this, you don’t even have to look at anything modern to realise that our humour is wonderfully weird and subversive; the Americans associate us with Monty Python and that speaks so much more to our funny bones than Warren United does. Monty Python is 40 years-old!

You should know by now how much I want to see a good home grown series on UK television and continue to support anything animated but here’s another stumbling block I couldn’t get past with Warren United, the animation. It just wasn’t up to scratch for a mainstream terrestrial channel, in fact in that respect it was flat out weak. The show is made by produced by Baby Cow ( whose littany of hits include The Mighty Boosh and Gavin and Stacy ) and animated by Smiley Guy: a Canadian company. This upsets me, there are many great UK studios that I feel would have done a better job, no offense to Smiley Guy but  my contacts list is full of guys that would have taken an oppurtunity like this and smashed it, just fucking smashed it. Smiley Guy, it seems also couldn’t decide what the show wanted to be a gave us a weird mix of 2D and dated CG. I’ve seen their demo-reel, if they had stuck with one choice ( their 2D stuff is great) I’m confident the result would have been better. My final gripe is the voice acting, I can’t get my head round Warren being played by someone so effortlessly funny as Darren Boyd, I’m not sure I’ve come across a more stilted voice track, we swing back to YouTube and Vimeo and you’ll find student productions with a more natural delivery, Warren United starred a Bafta winner, what on earth is going on?

Yet again, I’m disappointed by the UK’s failure to grasp what makes a successful adult animation. I don’t know what the winning formula of The Simpsons and its ilk is, if I did I’d be Matt Groening and I’d be rich. I can guess however, by looking at Family Guy, American Dad and almost anything on Adult Swim, that one tip is to take risks. When American Dad started we assumed it would be a repetition of Family Guy; however, it isn’t, the inclusion of a high functioning pansexual alien sociopath put paid to that theory. Roger, on paper, is a nightmare, a huge risk to take yet look how funny he is. Likewise Family Guy is not just a knock off of the Simpsons, it’s far riskier, it embraced its late time slot and ran with it, it went places that The Simpsons could never go. As for South Park, everything, from the stylised simplistic animation to the twisted humour, was a huge risk, there is literally nothing else like it and it’s awesome.

Isn’t it time we stopped trying to capture some sense of Englishness in our animations and just took a huge gamble? Can’t any TV company capture the zeitgiest of what’s being shown online by UK animators? Come on guys, we can do this; we can make a funny, original British adult animation for television. I reiterate the word ” can” because after watching Warren United I see we still haven’t managed it yet. Shame.

 

You can read more on Warren United by visiting the official website and if you like, download an app! If you think the show is Premier League rather than Championship let us know in the comments.

Warren United is available to watch on the ITV iPlayer now.