Mr Bigstuff: New British comedy a raucous tale of two estranged brothers

It’s a tale of two very different brothers.

One, Glen, will go to a local restaurant he frequents, then sit at a table right at the back next to the bathrooms, where the sound of every flush interrupts conversation, and say nothing.

The other, Lee, will turn up late to the dinner, stay for a minute before demanding a switch of tables, and drop the C-bomb in the middle of the room for all to hear when the server does not oblige.

Where Glen is subservient, Lee is domineering.

How can two people who came from the same parents, grew up in the same household and who both still remember the choreography to a cheesy spoon dance end up so opposite?

British comedy Mr Bigstuff wants to exploit that conflict in its six-episode first season, which drops in Australia today.

Created by and starring Ryan Sampson as the meek Glen, it rightly allows the bombastic comedian Danny Dyer to steal every scene as the boisterous Lee.

Glen lives a mundane life, selling carpets in a warehouse showroom, quietly hoping for a promotion to assistant manager.

He drives a nondescript car, lives in an underwhelming flat, is squirrelling away every spare pound for his wedding to fiancé Kirsty (Harriet Webb), and is prone to the occasional bout of erectile dysfunction.

He and Kirsty are surprised one night to find Glen sitting in their peach-walled lounge room. Glen is shocked to see him, but not as much as Kirsty who is convinced he’s an intruder.

The brothers are so estranged, that Glen had told Kirsty he has no family left.

Lee is back in town looking for a family friend Steve (Geoff Bell) and thinks Glen has a line on his whereabouts.

For all of Lee’s brashness - and he is very, very loud – he’s also sensitive enough to correct his brother to say “sex workers” and not “prostitutes” and knows how long it takes for improperly disposed of litter to biodegrade. He has layers, you know.

Everyone is on a collision course, with Lee the chaos agent disrupting Glen’s cosy little greige life. Not that it was perfect, it was just content enough to repress all the issues, like the fact Kirsty had been suspended from work but hadn’t told Glen. Or her compulsive penchant for a five-fingered discount.

And Lee’s motives aren’t exactly for an overdue bygones-and-all family reunion. He’s mixed up in some dodgy scheme that involves pushing a completely nude Steve up against a window.

Mr Bigstuff relies on broad but awkward comedy that sometimes makes you want to crackle aloud and sometimes makes you cringe so hard you start to wonder if your insides are collapsing in on themselves.

Sometimes Lee feels like he’s walked in from a Guy Ritchie gangster movie – or at least what Ritchie moves should have morphed to with the times.

But the core of this series is the relationship between the two brothers and whether they can ever get back to a place of semi-harmony and equilibrium.

Mr Bigstuff is not revelatory TV but it doesn’t need to be. There is enough funny stuff here, including Dyer’s committed bravado, to be perfectly diverting and chuckle-worthy.

Mr Bigstuff is streaming on Binge