peterrichboy For those like me who remember the much underrated Mike Leigh classic Nuts In May. Then Julia Davis Camping brings it back to life kicking and screaming into the 21st century. The plot is simple three middle age couples meet up to celebrate a 50th birthday by going on a camping trip. Whilst they may be friends each couple has in one way or another reached mid life crisis. One recently divorced brings along a younger sex mad girlfriend. The other two miserably unhappy with there dull lives, one a recovering alcoholic the other a neurotic mother who is convinced by listening to the right music and eating the right food will prevent her son from being gay! Add to the mix a randy pubescent teenager a creepy landowner who looks after his dieng mother while serving sausages and you have the mad black comedic genius that is Julia Davis. A classic

likelyd Camping starts out with a gentle English journey to the countryside, but there's a dark foreboding that fans of Julia Davis will soon pick up on. Each episode becomes darker and more disturbing, but infinitely more funny as the characters develop and their real unpleasantness soon becomes only too clear. The cringe level makes Peep Show look like Jackanory and as the storyline builds to the incredible final episode we're left shaking our heads in disbelief at the unpleasantness of these self-absorbed characters. At the end of the final episode I was laughing so hard that I was almost crying, but most of all I was thinking, What the hell happened to Tom?

Marissa Marsden This would get ten stars as a tragedy or a horror film but it's an odd choice for a comedy. The actors are fantastic, I was initially intrigued with so many well drawn characters but I wasn't looking for such a deeply bleak and upsetting nightmare. Getting to the end of episode 5 has been a sick endurance test. And it ends very badly apparently. Whoopee! Why would anyone want to see children genuinely distressed? Who gets pleasure from 'cringe, cringe, that guy's letting children cope with Mum's coma on their own. HAHAHA!'? Which is not credible anyway, as mid life crisis man is just idiotic rather than monstrously neglectful. Maybe it's for people who don't find real life horrifying enough. Or if you need reminding of childhood traumas or recent divorces

tincatinca-83500 I thought comedy was meant to be funny, and I love dark comedy, but this is dreadful. I watched the first episode and I found it to be totally cringe worthy to be honest. I have no idea why someone as talented as Steve Pemberton would get caught up in this nonsense. The main character is a very bossy out of control wife, which is OK for 30 seconds but very quickly becomes a major irritating factor which spoils the show. The attempts at humour are shallow and the bloke with his new girlfriend is just embarrassing. I can only assume that the previous review who gave it 10 stars was watching a different show. I did not laugh once and 'endured' the show as my partner wanted to see it. At the end we just looked at each other in bewilderment. Absolute garbage.