I enjoyed this. A good watch; entertaining and light. Harry Hill and the rest of the cast play up to the paradigms of their characters to good effect. Nothing much new or ground breaking but what is there is good and enjoyable. Best for kids who like to giggle at slapstick humor along with their grandparents. It has been shown lots recently on CBBC and that's the right place for this. I'd like to see more of these made as there is plenty of room to expand these characters and I would also like to see more of Harry Hill, David Mitchel and the rest of the cast in comedic character roles. So if you like to have a giggle on switch of for an hour or so watch this.If you want challenging sharp witty comedy, don't.

Not a laugh. Not a titter. BBC on low quality, high political correctness. Pity because the actors are good and Harry Hill really looks the part.Things that irked:1) The major feminist theme about allowing girls to be taught science. Yawn. 2) The racially 'balanced' cast in a period piece. Yawn. 3) The acceptability of a wife punching and knocking out her husband. What!? Try reversing the roles and getting away with it. 4) The rubbish inventions. A man with a pillow over his head pretending to be a robot?Watched it with my 3 kids. High expectations. Not one laugh. In fact the programme almost emptied our living room. BBC is so busy being PC it has lost all sense of creativity.

Having sat through the truly awful Gangsta Granny last year, I hoped this time the BBC would have made a better Christmas TV movie. After all Gangsta Granny was so bad, surely it couldn't be hard to make something better. Boy was I wrong. This is possibly the worst TV movie/film I have ever seen. It's so bad I feel compelled to write this review and rate it 1 Star multiple times based on how terrible this utter garbage really is. Seriously how did someone at the BBC watch this and allow it to be aired? This is so bad it makes me angry. The actors in this are good actors; with the likes of Ben Miller and David Mitchell, two of my favourite people on television so why the hell did they agree to do this? One can only assume it was for the money.There is not ONE funny moment in the story. It's so ridiculously stupid. All the "jokes" are so childish and pathetic, it's just not funny at all, you won't laugh once. The story didn't make sense, the characters were all unlikable, I found myself routing for the bad guy and wishing all the good characters would get killed off. It must have been edited together by a monkey I can only assume as any sane person would know this story doesn't make the remote bit sense. Even the CGI was terrible, the flames looked so fake and weren't even properly in place. The actors we know are good, but because the directing and script was so terrible it makes them look poor. Their lines are so cheesy. How many times is that stupid colonel going to say that same line about Mitchell's character? It's not funny.What's with the black policeman always crashing his bike and being ignored by everyone? Felt like kind of subtle racism to me and wasn't in the least bit funny. The worst bit however is the deal with the robot at the end hitting David Mitchell's character with people laughing as he's attacked? Wow that is assault! This film is actually encouraging and supporting assault and saying it's OK? Yeah what a great message for kids. This movie has a perfect moral message for children!Please don't watch this utter vile unfunny trash. The people I feel sorry for the most are the actors. They will forever be shamed with having starred in this terrible mess. Especially the child actor. I wonder what she'll think when she looks back at this in ten years time? It will tragically end her career I fear and she'll feel ashamed for ever having agreed to be in this. Shame on the director and anyone else involved in the making of this mess, hang your heads in shame at wasting a lot of time and money on something so terribly bad.

Brilliant but scatterbrained, Professor Branestawm (whose inventions tend to work in ways completely unforeseen by the inventor) finds himself in conflict with property developers.I have an abiding memory of sitting in Mr Weston's class at the age of 9 or so, around 1960, and being mesmerised at the notion of half a policeman saying "Pass along, p-". Tonight that image, reproduced faithfully on my TV, transported me straight back to my childhood.Charlie Higson's adaptation of the classic children's character (played beautifully by Harry Hill) is pitch perfect. It summons up a period England of the imagination, peopled with wonderfully improbable (and funny) characters and events. Bright, colourful and cheerful, it is an unqualified success. I hope we will see more.