Breeders, review: Martin Freeman’s parenting comedy struggles to stand out in a crowded field

There's a top notch team of writers behind these middle-class Macbeths, but the humour never quite rings true

Martin Freeman and Daisy Haggard star in Sky's new parenting comedy 'Breeders' (Sky UK)

I feel a bit guilty about knocking Breeders (Sky 1), because there are so many brilliant people behind it, much of it is done so well, and it can be funny. Let me just expand on that a little before I start being unkind. Its co-creators are Chris Addison (stand-up, and star of The Thick of It), Simon Blackwell (Peep Show, Veep), and Martin Freeman (too many triumphs to mention), so you’d expect something exceptional from such a team.

Well, to a degree it delivers. The breeders in question are Paul (Freeman) and his wife Ally (Daisy Haggard), parents of two young children, Luke (George Wakeman) and Ava (Jayda Eyles). It’s basically all about the stresses of parenthood, with the first two episodes, shown as a double bill for the debut on Sky 1, revolving around two classic modern parental scenarios: sleepless nights, and trying to get them into a decent state school.

Both kids are given some quite raw treatment, with “strong language throughout”, as they say. Freeman is (predictably) good as the passive aggressive, painfully frustrated 40-something dad who gets passed over for promotion at work and constantly regrets not allowing himself to go to art school – “life gets in the way”. I’m not sure how many real-life parents swear quite so violently at their kids when they’re being a bit boisterous; it’s like the usually mild mannered Paul has been to parenting classes run by Malcolm Tucker.

Ally isn’t far behind him in the verbal abuse stakes, and shares Paul’s ambivalence towards the little ones. “Who is happy with two kids under seven? I mean properly happy like when you’re in Portugal and you’ve just had a couple of beers and a big tomato?” she explains, while chatting to a work colleague. “If someone is climbing Scafell Pike with a mini fridge tied around them on a bit of washing line and then you tie another mini fridge on, then they’re not going to be happy, no. They’ll probably make it to the summit but it’ll be a slog but not a pleasure. Maybe there’s a nice view, but the mini fridges have just shat themselves”.

Paul and Ally are satisfyingly misanthropic, the Macbeths transposed to middle-class Clapham. Paul does say that he’d die for his kids even though he’d also like to kill them, but that’s about as far as the milk of human kindness runs. Together, via anonymous emails, Paul and Ally successfully plot to get a rival couple, the irritatingly smug Hicksons, to divorce – just so that Ava has more chance of jumping the queue for the most desirable local school. It’s funnier than it sounds.

The show’s greatest strength is also its greatest weakness, however. The writers pack the script with wisecracks, word play and wit, and the pace can be pretty fast. But the very richness of the writing and the smoothness of the dialogue makes it feel just a touch too artificial – you might call it “scripted unreality”, if that makes any sense. So when, for example, Paul’s dad (a sardonic turn by Alun Armstrong) talks about getting too old and going off to Dignitas, he adds that maybe by then there’ll be cheaper version – “easydeath”. Which is amusing enough, but would work a lot better as a quip for a stage comic than in it does in this sitcom.

Breeders is also unfortunate in that it’s entering a fairly crowded field of sharply observed dark parenting comedies – Catastrophe, Motherland and There She Goes, to offer a few memorable examples. I’m afraid those lucky breeders got there first.