Men Behaving Badly, Series 2

I rented this DVD because I so much enjoyed Martin Clunes in “Doc Martin” that I wanted to see him in a completely different role. This is the series that made him a big star on the telly. I looked at the reviews and noticed that most people weren’t enthusiastic about the first series, which was about two flatmates in London, politically incorrect beer-swillers, slobs, and not-too-successful woman-chasers. Then they got rid of the first flatmate and brought in a new one, and the reaction seemed to be better. So I started with this one. We watched two episodes, and we laughed. It’s funny, but not funny enough that we wanted to spend a lot of time with these guys. And it has one of the things that helped turn me off almost completely to sitcoms: a laugh track. Yes, I know, “Fawlty Towers” and “Blackadder” and “Mr. Bean” had laugh tracks, but I was usually laughing so hard I didn’t really hear them. That wasn’t the case with this one.