The main problem with this is that it is up against some pretty stiff competition. By that I mean "Big Train" and "Smack the Pony". I don't include the Fast Show as that is a different beast. You could even include "Bruiser" in that list.
Firstly although there are 5 "names" here and one I hadn't come across before none of them have set the world on fire. When you look at the list of people who came out of those three shows you have Oscars and Baftas falling out out of the sack. Plus one of the funniest men to ever grace our screens, yes I am looking at you Mark Heap!
So here we have Nick Frost, the second luckiest man in Showbusiness (take a bow Paddy McGuiness) who owes virtually everything he has to one vastly more talented friend (take a bow Paddy McGuiness). Amanda Abingdon ditto the above but make that luckiest woman. Then there was the guy who was in Game of Thrones as a bit part and also in Strike as a bit part. Then there is Daisy Haggard who had a bit part in the wonderful Episodes. So, you get the point, none of them have the talent or more importantly "charisma" to hold your attention.
Then the writers are quite.... errrm..... average? I mean it's not that the ideas couldn't have worked. It just wasn't tightened up enough and the cast didn't have the quality to pull it off. Take Smack the Pony, some of the ideas were very similar to these ideas (but 6 years earlier), silly men vs. Sillier women, people vs. Life kind of thing. But the hit to miss ratio was 10 to 1 in Smack the pony where two sketches per show might have been a bit weak or Big Train where one or two sketches fell flat ....... across the whole series.
So.... The cast added to the writing just don't hit the mark at any point. There is not one solid guffaw, not one belly laugh in the whole thing. Yes there are a few chuckles and yes there are a few points where you think "That's a good idea" but there aren't enough and they aren't enough to make you really smile.
Repetition. Ok it can really work. The Fast Show showed what can be done. But they did it with an utterly stellar cast. Paul Whitehouse? C'mon. The comedian's comedian Mr. Versatile. Need a teenager? Call on Paul. Need an 80 year old alcoholic? Call on Paul. Bruiser showed what you can achieve with weaker writing but a talented cast who can hold their own. Colman, Freeman Mitchell and Webb made the absolute most of what they had to work with. I think if there had been a series 2 of Bruiser it would have rocked the world. Then Big Train. Brilliant writing / Brilliant cast.
Not one performance in MSW leaves you thinking, ooh they're good. The women are painfully unfunny. Fiona, Doon, Sally and Sarah are funny in Smack the Pony. Not only are they funny thay have the confidence to know they are funny and the ability to pull it off. Amanda, Daisy and the other one are just not funny.
Why have I written all this. To show that this isn't a dumb 3 out of 10 thrown out by a bored housewife in Montana who fell across this somehow. The same woman who would give Big Train a 3 out of 10 because she just doesn't get "humor". This show is a 3 out of 10 because it fails at just about everything you could ask of a sketch show. The only surprise here is that they got a second series.
Do yourself a "favour" and watch Big Train and see how it should be done. Be warned if you laughed, even once, at Man Stroke Woman you won't stand a chance of surviving.
The main blame is with the writer's. None of it is that funny. And when you have that to surmount you have to be more talented than this group to pull it off. I saw it to the end and no, it didn't get better.
