Clearly the inspiration for this attempt is the very popular Canadian series "still standing" where Canadian comedy star Jonny Harris (of Murdoch Mysteries fame) creates a half-hour, heart-warming and gentle comedy routine about a small place in rural Canada (usually a place with less than 10,000 constituents, often hours' drive away from the main drag). What makes still standing appealing is the message of resilience against all odds and inventiveness that come from the stories about the town folks that Jonny meets, pretends to work with, and gently lampoons.
It appears that the producers of the show decided that they could 'innovate around' the 'still standing' format, so as to save on licensing fees. So Mr Allen's show is about small cities (Wakefield in the first ep.) it is about an hour (with ad breaks), and half of it is populated with poor comedic versions of game shows or tv reality, that clearly differentiate it from the Canadian show, but dilute and dumb-down Allen's interactions with the locals. I am sure the lawyers went through every detail to avoid liability. In spite of the often personable performance by Tom Allen, the outcome the show is too often cringe-worthy: so, in a Yorkshire city of 300,000 you have a cathedral and a pie shop! How quaint and original!
Review of Tom Allen Goes to Town
