Review of Sam Campbell's new Channel 4 comedy

It’s one thing to be the disruptively quirky figure on a robust format like Taskmaster or Last One Laughing, but for such a comedian to head their own show is a very different prospect.

Mainstream audiences who know Sam Campbell from those hits may not immediately warm to the wilful weirdness of Make That Movie, but those who know him from the live scene will have more of an inkling of what to expect from this distinctively idiosyncratic series. 

In fact, his alter-ego here – a maverick film director also called Sam Campbell – is almost the sanest one in the show, aside from the ever-supportive assistant Jess (Lara Ricote).

The mad premise that revolves around him is that he’s touring the country with his crew in a sort of movie-making version of Scooby-Doo’s Mystery Machine, meeting ordinary people who submitted suggestions for screen projects, then making them happen.

Thus episode one starts like a downbeat slice-of-ordinary-life documentary as we meet Mick Hall (Kim Noble), an awkward print shop worker whose ‘bulletproof idea’ revolves around a couple who can turn into snakes – but only one at a time so they are never together as two members of the same species. 

Rather than head to a studio, Campbell and his crew turn Mick’s store into the set – even if it requires a well-placed sledgehammer – and recruit his coworkers, played by Tarot's Kath Hughes and The Other One's Amit Shah, to be the stars. The former remains woefully inept at acting – plucky amateurs doing their inadequate best being a running theme – while it’s not long before the latter goes full pretentious luvvie, with ambitions towards global domination. 

Playing ‘spot the comedian’ among the supporting cast can be a fun game. Rob Auton, Katie Norris and Eric Rushton all make cameos in the opener, with Ed Aczel as the actor playing the detective (‘every movie has to have a detective’) with one major flaw in his performance. And if that bit of physical comedy is worth doing once, it’s worth doing half a dozen times…

Helen Bauer and Aussie comic – and long-term Campbell collaborator – Aaron Chen are part of his regular crew. Bauer plays to type the terse, no-nonsense sound woman, while Chen’s stony-faced Sebastian is genuinely unsettling, even though his job as intimacy co-ordinator is supposed to be all about making people comfortable. The final member of the team is veteran cinematographer Winnie, as played by respected stage actor David Hargreaves, able to deliver bonkers lines with deadpan gravitas. 

The last quarter of the episode is the ‘film’ they made, essentially an extended absurdist sketch version of the idea that expands into being a museum heist flick involving a cursed serpent’s tooth…

The format of the show allows it to take on a different personality each time. Episode two is a more credible premise, and could almost be a sitcom based around the relationships between the pensioners in a care home, if it wasn’t for the Tron-style sci-fi battles. The community’s idea was a film – a musical, it turns out – about a group of plucky older folk who go inside a computer, Fantastic Voyage-style – in their bid to defeat scammers.

For all that, it’s the image of Superbreast – Sebastian’s animated interactive user interface, based on a woman with one large central boob – that will stick with you. And remember, this is one of the more grounded episodes…

With bonkers gags crammed tightly into each quirky episode, Make That Movie has all the signs of being ‘cult success’, closer in ethos to Netflix’s I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson than it is to Last One Laughing. And for those on that wavelength, that’s a big recommendation.

• The first two episodes of Make That Movie are on Channel 4 at 10pm tonight, after Taskmaster. All episodes are also streaming now

Review date: 28 May 2026
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett