Sitcom Man Down returns to Channel 4 this month for a welcome second series despite the sudden death of Rik Mayall last June at the age of 56 who played the father of Dan, Greg Davies’s self-styled central character in the first series.
The remaining cast, which includes 2004 Funny Women Awards finalist Roisin Conaty, is reunited to deliver a recalibrated household which features the brilliant Stephanie Cole as Nesta, Dan’s eccentric aunt. The new set up more than does justice to Mayall’s memory whose character Richard was to have played an even more torturous and prominent role in season two.
Cast changes aside, much of the humour of the original series transcends and the Bottom-like bullying of Dan by his father Richard is replaced with the torturous parenting style meted out to Timothy by his mother in Ronnie Corbett’s sitcom Sorry! Gwyneth Powell as Dan’s mother Polly is a willing accomplice to Nesta’s attempts to secure Dan a girlfriend and they are both there to pick up the emotional pieces after a date with a much younger woman take a kinky turn and when his attempts to woo Emma, as played by Jeany Spark, consistently fail.
The other central relationship is between Dan and best friends Jo, played by Roisin Conaty, and Brian, Mike Wozniak. Conaty brings a refreshing lack of guile to her character who is in turn both clown and ‘fall woman’ to her two hapless male friends.
Man Down is both ‘old fashioned’ in its structure reminiscent of Only Fools & Horses and the previously mentioned Sorry, yet has an original semi-dark twist helped along by the three comic leads who all hail from a stand up background. The script is clearly Greg Davies’s but additional material was provided by Stephen Morrison and Sian Harries which, given the tragic circumstances of Mayall’s untimely death between the two seasons, gives a broad and substantial voice to the new series.
I will be revisiting season one with relish ahead of Man Down series two going out on Channel 4 in June.
