The Stupids

The Stupids are a weird family, but entirely lacking the intriguingly dysfunctional nature of, say, the Simpsons (which Tom Arnold used to write). Ex-mailman Stanley (Arnold), Joan (Lundy), and kids Buster (Hall) and sweet Petunia (McKenna) inhabit a '50s world of candy-stripe colours, gingham bows, puff skirts and alien-movie speech patterns. Their true provenance, however, is American children's television and its dim never-never land of permutational studio sitcoms. The dumb surreal - Stanley taking the goldfish for a walk, the expostulations on the weekly theft of their garbage - one can accept. But the rambling, episodic narrative, laden with naff sight gags, dissipates attention in minutes.