Sick Note, Sky One review ★★★★★

Don't be fooled by Sick Note's cool cast. The new comedy on Sky One, stars Rupert Grint, aka Ron Weasley from the Harry Potter movies, Nick Frost from Hot Fuzz and, in season two, Lindsay Lohan – of Lindsay Lohan fame.

But, just like the recent Hollywood Blockbuster Murder on the Orient Express, Sick Note's exciting collection of stars are hampered by a mediocre storyline. It's like a snow-free Murder in the Orient Express, without Kenneth Branagh's horrifying facial hair – it's more 'Murder in a really grubby English Flat'.

Hopeless layabout stoner Daniel Glass (Rupert Grint) is an unkempt sponge, who spends his days in his girlfriend's apartment bunking off work, playing video games and debating whether he'd have sex with Marilyn Monroe's recently deceased body.

In real life, obviously no one as uncharismatic as Daniel would be able to woo a put-together girl like Becca (Pippa Bennett-Warner). And yet, the idea that Daniel could be fancy-able to someone with half a brain isn't as fourth-wall shatteringly stupid an idea as the suggestion that the dishevelled Dr. Iann Glennis (Nick Frost) would have made it through medical school.

Dr. Glennis is a man so incompetent that he not only paralyses his own face with a botox injection, he misdiagnoses Daniel with cancer. The news has an unexpected effect: suddenly Daniel's friends, family and employers discover unforetold levels of tolerance, sympathy and support for the unshaven layabout. And so, when Daniel discovers that he's good and well, he lies about still having cancer. And then accidentally kills someone over it... in a really grubby English flat.

That delicious, understated English humour that makes the comedy Motherland – airing at the same time as Sick Note on BBC Two – so exemplary is sadly missing. It is replaced instead with a jam-packed cast of people all fighting too hard to be 'the funny one' and some obvious gags.

Perhaps Lindsay Lohan will bring something fresh in season two. Or perhaps the old fable is right, and you really can have too much of a good thing.

Sick Note will air in the autumn on Sky One and Sky Atlantic as well as being shown on NOWTV