{"id":611579,"date":"2026-07-30T11:48:13","date_gmt":"2026-07-30T11:48:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/611579\/"},"modified":"2026-07-30T11:48:13","modified_gmt":"2026-07-30T11:48:13","slug":"ann-droid-charming-sitcom-bobs-along-on-a-cloud-of-gentle-whimsy-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/611579\/","title":{"rendered":"Ann Droid: Charming sitcom bobs along on a cloud of gentle whimsy \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

The charming sitcom<\/a> Ann Droid (BBC) stars Diane Morgan as a lovably awkward robot programmed to look after an older woman and to help her stay independent.<\/p>\n

Given that billing you might expect it to be all about artificial intelligence and how robots – if not yet part of our lives – soon will be. It is, sort of, about those things. But what it\u2019s really about is the ageing process and how society is happy to write off older people as superfluous irritants – a waste of time, resources and empathy.<\/p>\n

Those are the boxes poor Sue (soap veteran Sue Johnston, who is quietly hilarious) has been put into since the death of her husband. She has a son Michael (Paul Ready) – but he\u2019s useless and Sue can\u2019t stand his wife Ren\u00e9e (Andrea Valls), which is fair enough considering Ren\u00e9e recently had an affair with her jujutsu instructor. <\/p>\n

She has a nemesis in the Hyacinth Bucket-esque Phyllis (Margot Leicester), and a pal of sorts in local charity shop owner Eileen (Kathryn Hunter). However, her social life gains an entirely new dimension as Michael buys her an artificial companion – a second-hand robot (which exist in this version of 2026) whom she names Linda.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Chatbots can now pass the Turing test. Lots of humans can\u2019tOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

In the hands of Hollywood, Ann Droid would be a cloying tale of friendship between a lonely woman and a chirpy machine – a found family forged from solitude and microchips.<\/p>\n

There is no such saccharine here. Linda isn\u2019t all that friendly and is mostly a mechanism by which Morgan can deliver quirky cringe comedy chuckles and gush about Alan Sugar and The Apprentice, with which Linda becomes immediately obsessed upon booting up.<\/p>\n

Morgan is best known for her comedy documentary presenter Philomena Cunk, and anyone expecting the same parodying dark humour may wonder if this show doesn\u2019t need its batteries recharged. It isn\u2019t scorched Earth in the least and instead bobs along on a cloud of gentle whimsy – perfectly pleasant. It is its own thing and entirely comfortable in its synthetic skin.<\/p>\n

The only character who doesn\u2019t work is Ready\u2019s beta-bloke Michael. The actor is essentially reprising the role he played in Motherland, and I\u2019m not sure how progressive it is to portray a thoughtful man who is in touch with his feelings as a wimp and a punchbag. <\/p>\n

You wonder if they would make a woman character such a laughing stock nowadays. Either way, it marks the series out as part of the unfortunate comedy tradition of piling on men who dare to be nerds, which is ironic given that, as a show about robots, Ann Droid itself is very nerdy indeed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The charming sitcom Ann Droid (BBC) stars Diane Morgan as a lovably awkward robot programmed to look after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":611580,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[265],"tags":[3412,18,117,19,17,128,12844],"class_list":["post-611579","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-bbc","tag-eire","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-tv","tag-tv-guide"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/117008774631646398","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611579","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=611579"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611579\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/611580"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=611579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=611579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=611579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}