Up until Neeson walked in, I just felt like I was watching a not so funny, dwarf sized David Brent.
The Liam walked in and decided to go all ****ING EPIC over my screen. That five minutes was ****ing god like. Saved the episode.
I thought Warwick Davis' perfromance was not bad, sure, it could have been better, he is not a comedian, he is more an actor who can perform comedy. I thought mainly it was the writing that was letting him down, so the show could get better once we are past the introductory stage. If he is given better material, he could be very good, these kinds of things can sometimes be the crappest at the intro stage, but go on to be sublime in all later eps once we can just get into the universe they have created without exposition(like the first issue of Peter Bagge's Hate in comparison to every succeeding issue).
But the writing on the Liam Neeson bit was better, y'know, like in Extras, it benefits that we all have a preconception of him, and are thrown for a loop when he hits out with totally outrageous lines. So, the one bit that was very good was basically them doing the same thing that they did in their previous series. they're supposed to be doing something brand new here, so that was not a good sign really.
Let's talk about LN's performance properly though, without the usual meaningless forum soundbites...what was great about it was that Liam Neeson's usual type of intense understated performance was very suited for playing an absolute nutter, haha, the type of nutter who seems like he is taking onboard other people's suggestions and p.o.v., but then shows he hasn't been doing that at all, swinging the greengrocer's bit back to the doc's office/aids bit, bringing the single minded nutter notion to a head, that being the punchline to the gag.
