Tom Allen Goes to Town (2020– ) User Reviews

Mark Steel's in Town

[owen-watts · 7/10 · 1 January 2021]

A fascinating format with the endlessly likable Tom Allen, clearly heavily inspired by the long-running BBC Radio 4 show hosted by Mark Steel where he travels from town-to-town doing stand-up about the place to its residents. Allen's TV equivalent does this but also mixes in a bit of a variety shtick to it and adds a curiously underused celebrity assistant into the mix. Frankly I'm a fan of this sort of in-focus localism so I'm not so bothered by the pilfering and Allen is die-cast for this sort of thing but it's sadly likely this pilot won't go further for a while yet due to the virus and so forth.

A Fun way to pass some time.

[jnh-123-746786 · 10/10 · 1 January 2021]

Tom Allen cracked it. I can't remember how long it has been when I was smiling or chuckling through an entire programme. Martin Kemp was an added bonus and I hope we seem him again along the way. Keep them coming Tom. I'll be watching. Thank you.

Fantastic tribute

[markblake-life · 10/10 · 30 December 2020]

Very well done Tom. Leave us wanting more as always! A great nod to our smaller areas of the country, in a very inclusive way. My late friend (passed away aged 22) always liked to champion Wakefield, even though he moved there from Barnsley like the chap in the front row. Look forward to the next town!

Just listen to Mark Steel's In Town instead

[jertzeedon · 2/10 · 23 January 2021]

Anyone familiar with BBC Sounds Mark Steel's In Town will be well aware of how well this sort of programme could work. Where Mark Steel really gets into the heart of each town he visits and makes the local audience and the listening audience laugh out loud this is a poor and pale comparison. I am a fan of Tom Allen but his is an hour long programme that doesn't dig deep enough into the mind and ways of the locals. It trivialises many aspects and the daft quiz game on stage is pointless and slightly embarrassing. I didn't learn much about Wakefield and wasn't entertained much either so not sure exactly what the point of the show was.

an idea with potential poorly executed

[jazfro · 1 January 2021]

Clearly the inspiration for this attempt is the very popular Canadian series "still standing" where Canadian comedy star Jonny Harris (of Murdoch Mysteries fame) creates a half-hour, heart-warming and gentle comedy routine about a small place in rural Canada (usually a place with less than 10,000 constituents, often hours' drive away from the main drag). What makes still standing appealing is the message of resilience against all odds and inventiveness that come from the stories about the town folks that Jonny meets, pretends to work with, and gently lampoons. It appears that the producers of the show decided that they could 'innovate around' the 'still standing' format, so as to save on licensing fees. So Mr Allen's show is about small cities (Wakefield in the first ep.) it is about an hour (with ad breaks), and half of it is populated with poor comedic versions of game shows or tv reality, that clearly differentiate it from the Canadian show, but dilute and dumb-down Allen's interactions with the locals. I am sure the lawyers went through every detail to avoid liability. In spite of the often personable performance by Tom Allen, the outcome the show is too often cringe-worthy: so, in a Yorkshire city of 300,000 you have a cathedral and a pie shop! How quaint and original!