By FIONA RAE
So where do you go after you've been part of the most acclaimed British television comedy in the past 20 years? After you've been called an "unconventional hottie" by one newspaper, which extolled at length your lovely, lovelorn attractiveness? After you've done a small but stand-out part in a big British film (Love Actually)?
Sadly, for Martin Freeman, the only way was down from those giddy heights. Down to the dire, really-not-worth-watching, turn-off-now Hardware (TV One, 10.05pm).
We know Freeman from The Office, of course. He was the one our hearts went out to. The only sane one in a sea of idiots. The one who awkwardly, forlornly lusted after Dawn the receptionist and was too fragile to make a leap into the unknown and go back to school.
Unfortunately, he's traded in Nice Tim for Fairly Obnoxious Mike, who we have no sympathy for whatsoever. And we certainly don't care about his cast of imaginatively named sidekicks - ladies' man Kenny, nerdy Steve, bizarre boss Rex or Mike's girlfriend, Anne.
He's also traded in a show that had a thoroughly postmodern format in its faux documentary style, to a sitcom that's like going back to the age of Open All Hours. In fact, Open All Hours was funnier. Actually, the cash register in Open All Hours was funnier.
Hardware may have had a script that looked good on the page, but the cast turn it into a lead balloon. Ostensibly, it had everything going for it: it's written by Simon Nye, responsible for the long-running Men Behaving Badly.
In episode one, Mike decided he was going to be "nice", after a customer to whom he was rude tried to throw himself under a bus.
You didn't need to be a fortune-teller to see where this was going - he was called a loser by the next customer and his girlfriend said it was like living with a kind aunty when he started leaving small gifts around the house.
This hilarious identity crisis continued while his mate Kenny tried to goad him into reverting back to his old sarcastic self, which frankly wasn't that bad, until he whacked the "loser" customer with a chair.
A bit of an overreaction, you could say. The result was that the suicidal rabbit-hutch maker came back to the show and stood up for himself, Mike claiming to have taught him a few life skills.
To be honest, I can't tell you what last week's episode was about, because about 10 minutes in I couldn't stand it any longer. TV One has given Hardware the best possible lead-in with the sublime Black Books, but even that can't save it.
The only positive thing I can say is that maybe - just maybe - it gets better. It was renewed for a second series in Britain, which means it must have been doing something right, although I can't think what. At the moment, it's not so much Hardware as Hard Work.
It's a long way down from Tim to toolman
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