Another homegrown product that feels a dire need to ‘charm’ its audience with its Brit-flavoured quirks, before mixing in a little social-issue drama to keep things, y’know, relevant. Worked for The Full Monty way back; now it just feels hackneyed. And so we arrive at an allotment in Northern England, supervised by a small-minded Richard Littlejohn-type (Philip Jackson) and peopled by spiky salt-of-the-Earth ‘characters’ whose world is mildly bothered by the arrival of asylum seekers, all thoroughly decent and polite, with cute, precocious kids.
As too many subplots vie for attention, any effort to challenge the audience dissolves into safest-outcome blandness. A bloomin’ disappointment.