Looking at some of the reviews here, it's clear some people found this show funny and entertaining; this is good. Unfortunately, I did not. I know this review will be controversial as a result, but all I can do is give my honest opinion.
I can usually give new shows the benefit of the doubt but I found Warren so painfully flawed in so many departments that a 2/10 slating almost feels generous given how little I enjoyed watching it.
Imagine watching The Office, but Chris Finch is the main character and the entire show is all about him bullying people as unpleasantly as possible. That's what Warren feels like.
The first problem is the characterisation. Warren's family are bland and uninteresting and his wife is written as stupid to the point that you wonder how she remembers to breathe. Warren himself is a cringe-inducing disaster.
Unlike most "grumpy" characters, such as the beloved Basil Fawlty and Victor Meldrew, Warren does not have any charm or vulnerability to balance out his personality. He is not so much "grumpy" as he is sociopathic and narcissistic. He exists in a perpetual state of shooting out cynical, corrosive bile (usually directed towards people who don't deserve it) and smug self-importance (usually not played for laughs).
Warren outright verbally abuses his stepsons every time he talks to them, eyerolls through every conversation with his wife, relentlessly torments and rips off his driving students, slanders his work rivals and even commits actual crime because he doesn't care about anyone else.
One scene has him screaming irately at a garden centre manager for what feels like 10 minutes, insulting this polite man and just generally being a complete d**k in the most unlikable possible fashion. Are we meant to laugh because he's just a terrible bully with no redeeming features? Because it's...not particularly funny.
Added to the bad characters, the writing is appalling in some segments to the point of insulting the viewer's intelligence. The second episode was the straw that broke the camel's back for me. Warren is accused by a family of running over their cat, after finding it dead in the road and stopping his car to look at it.
His wife was in the passenger seat of the car at the time, staring out of the windscreen, and he was driving at about 5 mph. She saw the dead cat lying there, heard Warren comment that it was already dead, and saw him get out and walk over to it.
So what does she do? She starts repeating, over and over again, that they will pay for the cat because she thinks Warren ran it over. Even though this is physically impossible for her to think unless she's had a full lobotomy or something.
I can tolerate a bad joke, but a bad joke set up in such a painfully stupid and nonsensical fashion was just too much for me.
In conclusion; it seems a bit like Marmite, you either love this show or hate it. Personally, I thought it somehow managed to be both bland and bad to the point of being unwatchable, so I suppose that in itself is an achievement.
I can usually give new shows the benefit of the doubt but I found Warren so painfully flawed in so many departments that a 2/10 slating almost feels generous given how little I enjoyed watching it.
Imagine watching The Office, but Chris Finch is the main character and the entire show is all about him bullying people as unpleasantly as possible. That's what Warren feels like.
The first problem is the characterisation. Warren's family are bland and uninteresting and his wife is written as stupid to the point that you wonder how she remembers to breathe. Warren himself is a cringe-inducing disaster.
Unlike most "grumpy" characters, such as the beloved Basil Fawlty and Victor Meldrew, Warren does not have any charm or vulnerability to balance out his personality. He is not so much "grumpy" as he is sociopathic and narcissistic. He exists in a perpetual state of shooting out cynical, corrosive bile (usually directed towards people who don't deserve it) and smug self-importance (usually not played for laughs).
Warren outright verbally abuses his stepsons every time he talks to them, eyerolls through every conversation with his wife, relentlessly torments and rips off his driving students, slanders his work rivals and even commits actual crime because he doesn't care about anyone else.
One scene has him screaming irately at a garden centre manager for what feels like 10 minutes, insulting this polite man and just generally being a complete d**k in the most unlikable possible fashion. Are we meant to laugh because he's just a terrible bully with no redeeming features? Because it's...not particularly funny.
Added to the bad characters, the writing is appalling in some segments to the point of insulting the viewer's intelligence. The second episode was the straw that broke the camel's back for me. Warren is accused by a family of running over their cat, after finding it dead in the road and stopping his car to look at it.
His wife was in the passenger seat of the car at the time, staring out of the windscreen, and he was driving at about 5 mph. She saw the dead cat lying there, heard Warren comment that it was already dead, and saw him get out and walk over to it.
So what does she do? She starts repeating, over and over again, that they will pay for the cat because she thinks Warren ran it over. Even though this is physically impossible for her to think unless she's had a full lobotomy or something.
I can tolerate a bad joke, but a bad joke set up in such a painfully stupid and nonsensical fashion was just too much for me.
In conclusion; it seems a bit like Marmite, you either love this show or hate it. Personally, I thought it somehow managed to be both bland and bad to the point of being unwatchable, so I suppose that in itself is an achievement.