Sick Note: Gay Subtexts in the Most Unpleasant Sitcom on TV

Daniel Glass (Rupert Grint, left) is having a bad day.  His girlfriend has kicked him out, his boss is planning to fire him, and to add to his woes, he's diagnosed with cancer.

Suddenly everyone starts being very nice to him. His girlfriend lets him move back in, he won't be fired, he can get out of anything by claiming that he's not feeling well.

Then Daniel finds out that his incompetent physician, Dr. Glennis (Nick Frost of Shaun of the Dead) has misdiagnosed him.  No cancer.  But he decides to play the sick card awhile longer.... and things start to go downhill fast.

His best friend, Ash (Togu Ogunmefun), who is sleeping with his girlfriend, overhears everything, then falls out of a window to his death.  To avoid being charged with murder, Daniel asks Dr. Glennis to make it look like an anonymous hit and run accident.  But Ash isn't actually dead, just in a coma.  But Dr. Glennis accidentally switched cell phones. A police office (Daniel Rigby, left) starts snooping around.  And Daniel's online gaming friend, Will (Dustin Demri-Burns) shows up with dark secrets of his own.

The complications are humorous -- I actually laughed out loud several times in each episode, and I almost never laugh at a tv show.  There are gay subtexts everywhere, especially Daniel-Dr. Glennis,but Will also seems to be in love with Daniel, and Daniel flirts with Officer Hayward.  There are also a lot of jokes involving same-sex behavior.

Will (to Daniel): "Take off your clothes.  We're going to take a bath together...just kidding."

Daniel's disgustingly sexist boss, Kenny West (Don Johnson), drops his pants in front of him.  Daniel assumes that he wants a blow job, but actually he is demonstrating that he is a cancer survivor.

I'm not sure about Daniel's panicked reactions.  Is he horrified because he hates these two guys, or because the idea of same-sex intimacy is disgusting?

But my main problem with Sick Note is the characters.

Kenny West is an over-acted, over-the-top caricature of a sexist boss circa 1955.  He discusses his penis during business meetings, litters his speech with the crudest profanity imaginable, and openly propositions his employees.  Um...hostile workplace? Sexual harassment?

Daniel is a complete jerk, utterly amoral.  His best friend falls to his death because Daniel startled him.  No grief, no guilt -- how can I dispose of the body?  He kills his girlfriend's cat (it takes several tries).  He discusses whether he would go back in time and have sex with Marilyn Monroe's corpse.

Dr. Glennis is also utterly amoral, but more importantly, he's too stupid to live.  He doesn't know what ASAP means.  He mispronounces easy medical terms.  He doesn't know how to take a pulse (wherever did he go to medical school?).  There is no one on Earth that clueless.

Officer Hayward is also too stupid to live, but more importantly, he's too prudish to be a police officer.  A woman in a low-cut blouse sends him into a tizzy of embarrassment.

The characters are simply unpleasant to watch.  And unpleasant to look at.  Rupert Grint has a pasty, doughy body and a face out of a disease-of-the-week movie.  Nick Frost is a bit too chubby even for chasers.  And no one else unbuttons a button.

My verdict: rewatch Shaun of the Dead instead.  More buddy-bonding, and the characters are pleasant.