No Big Deal | Review of the first sitcom produced by AI

No Big Deal

Review of the first sitcom produced by AI

Apparently there’s a ten per cent chance artificial intelligence will at some point wipe out human civilisation as we know it. But for now, it’s merely being used to make content that makes it seem like that would not be such a bad idea at all.

No Big Deal boasts of being the first sitcom produced by AI – and it’s as dreadful as you fear. While all the scenes have been created by computer, it has been written by a human – well, an investment capitalist – who proves that it’s not just AI that can create slop.

Andrew Dickinson makes the same mistake as almost every rookie sitcom writer (and latter-day Ricky Gervais) in thinking that the key is just to have your characters talk filth and banter inanely. There are comments aplenty about arses, wanking, farts, spit roasts, 69ing and people called ‘Ben Dover’ in this 30-minute pilot.

Then there’s a running half-assed pseudo stand-up thread about: ‘What’s the deal with supermarkets selling cooked chicken cheaper than a fresh chicken?’, which the Tesco website suggests isn’t even true…

Our lead character, Derek, an investor like the show’s creator Andrew Dickinson, is supposed to be a likeable rogue. The attractive woman in the show certainly seems to think so, sleeping with him on the first day (wish fulfilment from the male writer?). But he’s irredeemably awful, whining, misogynistic, ableist (‘why do the disabled get all the good car-parking spaces?’), selfish. Him committing a hit-and-run is supposed to be just LOLs.

And given Dickinson can’t write middle-aged male characters, it won’t come as a surprise to find he can’t write women either. The first scene where we meet Georgina, the potential client who beds Derek so eagerly she announces, apropos of nothing: ‘I’m very comfortable with my body shape and will not stand for anyone who ridicules the fuller figure.’ Which is just the sort of thing real human women say in business meetings. (And she’s a fairly ‘normal’ shape, as if that’s relevant).

All this before we get on to the issues of AI, which make a terrible script even worse. Because why on Earth would you want human actors who can portray emotion when you can have soulless digital avatars who unconvincingly mimic it? Their timing and dull line-readings kill any of the few traces of humour detectable in the script.

Even though it’s relatively slick by current AI standards, the show is not without weird cuts, continuity glitches and oddities such as a deli counter that has a sign proclaiming: ‘Well bhak sam pïlne for yow for 5% brirtish or ratiher buli ank’ staffed by a trainee whose nametag reveals is variously called Phlas, Rvolk, Whag, Romly or Cacn, working under a supervisor called 8K101SIS.

Social media and AI democratise art. Anyone can make anything now, especially if you’ve got deep enough pockets to afford the generation credits. But No Big Deal is as strong a case for the gatekeepers as you could imagine, as no commissioner worth their salt would ever touch this drivel.

It’s not impossible to see how AI could help the creation of a sitcom, perhaps to create a tester reel to show proof of concept, or to animate a cartoon. But not this.

In the famous words of the great philosopher Jeff Goldblum: ‘Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should.’ This effort is not worth a thimbleful of water, let alone however many litres the data centre used by studio ModeLabs guzzled to create this.

Dan Hawthorne from the company said: ‘Nobody questions whether the CGI in a Marvel film is "cheating". People judge entertainment by how it makes them feel, not by the tools used to create it.’

Well, this will make you feel sad for the state of humanity.

Here it is, if you can bear it:

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Review date: 15 Sep 2026
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett