The Persuasionists (2010– ) User Reviews

Lackluster scripts, but still watchable

[Sandcooler · 4/10 · 6 February 2010]

What would happen if you took five unlikeable oddballs and had them work together in an advertising agency? Nobody cares, but the BBC picked up this premise anyway. This show has some funny bits here and there, but these are mostly bits that really go for the easiest, lowest humour there is: funny accents and weird hair, the things that make me laugh and groan at the same time. The dialogues range from rather bland to excruciatingly awful. No ideas, little wit, they're mostly just a pile-up of lame punchlines 102% of the viewers could have come up with. The saving grace of this show are the actors, who do the best they can with their pathetic one-dimensional characters. Especially Simon Farnaby regularly cracks me up as the guy from eastern Europe who mysteriously still has a British name. All he has to do is walk around and be weird, but he squeezes every drop out of that. In one episode he walks around with a bag and steals people's happiness. That's probably the lamest subplot any sitcom has ever had, but Farnaby somehow makes it work. Jarred Christmas is also rather good as the Australian guy who is well, Australian. "The Persuasionists" is by no means a good show, but I occasionally find myself watching it anyway.

So near, yet.

[colinrogers1 · 5/10 · 31 August 2023]

You can't actually view this anywhere anymore which sort of tells you a great deal. This was one of those sum of its parts was far better than the completed version. Iain Lee himself says his straight guy turn was poor, and it was. The other actors were great but given minimal substance. Some of the scenes throughout were cringeworthy. However you did get to see some future stars, especially Gemma Whelan ( GoT, The Tower, Upstart Crow) making a brief appearance or two. You could see the idea was hood but the writer needed more help before it got to TV. Every episode ( apart from the first) felt like storyboard; 2am; it's not final type scripts were green lit by execs without reading it. Some great micro scenes were there especially in the actually rehearsed first episode. For ad agency comedy look to Absolute Power which was brilliant, started its life via radio. The Persuasionists should have taken the same route, or advice.

Its 2010 not 1982

[namelesswon · 19 January 2010]

This is supposed to be the future, where situation comedy has progressed via the long established televisual medium from such writers as Galton and Simpson, John Sullivan, Graham Linehan it seems as a natural progression that what comes after needs to be of this quality or better, otherwise whats the point? You'd think that a sit com about an advertising company is just a lazy opportunistic way of creating easy comedy about ducks in a barrel that any fool can make, I mean how universally loathsome are ad-men, it seems ripe, right? Unfortunately it seems like its written by Johnathan Thake an ad-man devoid of any self consciousness but who seems to have some BBC contacts and likes the "I.t. Crowd". The real travesty here is Adam Buxton, Simon Farnaby, Jarred Christmas and Daisy Haggard, comedy actors who have picked a limp donkey in what could possibly be that end of my career/boredom oh well lets jump on anything horse race. The try hard comic potential so stifled by their lame comedic cliché characters are desperately grasping at straws here for some kind of evocative comedy moment. This is typified in one scene where Buxton's character grasping a beer keg storms a meeting in a misjudged drunken stupor, the Ian Lee character turning to his colleague with what should be a look of "doh, you idiot, what the hell" but due to what could be an inability in comedic delivery or a slip in mask of acting capability can not even hide the look of utter failure which pervades and draws a look of "Oh dear it's all come down to this", or maybe i'm reading too much into this and Ian Lee is actually just rubbish.

In todays world of recession, economic evil and gloom, where ad-men are the throttling hands of evil corporations who worship Satan's ball bag, these cretins need to be ripped another hole with comedic precision and vigour, society demands it. Where is Chris Morris when you need him?

Complete and utter crap!

[kingpap · 1/10 · 9 February 2010]

The premise for the show sounded promising, unfortunately I then had the misfortune to actually watch it! I can't believe that somebody actually got paid for this garbage. Abysmal writing and the acting was truly awful.

I must admit that I only watched the first episode of this "comedy," which is set in the offices of a fictional ad company, maybe it got better as the series progressed - after all, it really couldn't get any worse, could it?

The series was written and created by Jonathan Thake. I guess he must have some friends at the BBC.