User reviews

The Peter Principle was a BBC comedy which i found very funny for a number of reasons. The bank manager was inefficient and incapable of doing his job properly - i distinctly remember the episode where he brought in scouts to count money because he had given an account to a large sports store and the bank was not big enough to deal with it!!!! There were funny scenes like this and whilst the script was not awesome, it was still pretty funny. This is yet another British comedy which does not need over-use of swearing and innuendos to be funny and clever however it did not attract a great audience and, as far as i am aware, no more episodes will be made. It is nowhere near The Brittas Empire or Fawlty Towers - these are the comedies to make Britain proud - but it is still funnier than the average American comedy.

This should have been a great show. A good setting, a branch of a provincial bank, and characters familiar to all who have worked in offices. The boss is a figurehead lacking in any skills other than impressing his own boss, the ambitious and over efficient deputy, the supervisor who is good at her job but cannot think for herself, the cynical veteran who has no interest in anything other than his own small patch, the eager but painfully inexperienced office junior. So they are all strong characters, played well by the actors and actresses involved. The sets are realistic, with the interior of the counter cleverly constructed so that, whilst it is obvious that customers are coming into the bank, the extras are not a distraction from the main action.

So what is the problem?

Put bluntly, the scripts are painfully unfunny. They are not slapstick, they are not observational, they are not one liners. They are just plain boring. It is as if every ancient cliche under the sky was hastily cobbled together, and then a wafer thin plotline sewn around them. Watching this series gives the impression of a flying machine whose makers spent years designing the machine, then spent months ordering all the parts, then handpicked a workforce, and then threw it all together in a day, resulting in an unwieldy mess that does not work properly.

For some reason, this painfully unfunny sitcom lasted for two seasons. My advice is to take a look at one episode just to see an early nineties time capsule. I doubt if you will want to see another.

I don't know why this is not on DVD yet. But, I taped it when it was on TV and I've enjoyed watching this show over and over again.

The cast is great and Jim Broadbent (Peter Duffley) does a remarkable job of playing the daft manager. Claire Skinner (Susan Harvey) is great and Daniel Flynn (David, I never really caught his last name)does a good job. There are laughs everywhere -- from the situation to the dialogue.

Let me just put it this way: I won't watch Fawlty Towers or Britta's Empire re-runs. I wlll watch the Peter Principle over and over and over again.