Robot carers sound grim but Diane Morgan and her co-writer Sarah Kendall offer another, more “intriguing perspective” in their new BBC comedy, said Hannah J Davies in The Guardian. What if they were “incompetent and socially inept” but “also considerate, compassionate and lovable”?
This “wonderfully fresh and funny” show follows Sue (Sue Johnston), an elderly widow whose “whiny” son Michael (Paul Ready) has bought her a second-hand robot carer called Linda. It’s “not much of a spoiler” to reveal that Sue develops an “unlikely bond” with Linda (played by Morgan with a “perfect level of unblinking stiffness”).
Cleverly, “Ann Droid” is set in an “entirely normal suburban Britain”, where robots just happen to be helping out with the gardening or the supermarket shop, said Anita Singh in The Telegraph. “They don’t feel out of place.” As Sue’s friendship with Linda blossoms, the show unfurls into an “unexpectedly poignant sitcom” that looks at “the challenges of growing old”.
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In its more “slapstick moments”, there are echoes of Morgan’s earlier show, “Mandy”, about a jobless woman’s bizarre money-making schemes, said Rebecca Nicholson in the Financial Times. Both shows revel in the “offbeat and surreal” but this one is “softer, less outrageous, more observational”.
Linda’s “bluntness” prevents the show from slipping into “sentimentality”. When she realises Sue is grieving her late husband, the robot must “research why it is that humans feel sad when someone dies” but her findings are “lightened” by the fact she can only call Sue’s partner “Dead David”. “This is a sly sitcom, then: silly on the outside but, when you look closer, smart and heartfelt.”
With her “terrible wig” and “strange head tilts”, Morgan plays Linda “uncannily well”, said Carol Midgley in The Times. Not much about the concept is new but, at its core, the show “isn’t really about robots”. Often more of a “sadcom than a sitcom”, it delves into the “profundity of grief”. But there are “plenty of funny moments”, too, as Linda “proves her worth” through a series of “escapades” that suggest having a robot carer might not be such a bad thing. “It is daft, but deceptively deep.”
