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Watch this: Soft Border Patrol

Blame Game regular Neil Delamere features as 'head of virtual patrol' Niall Sweeney in new BBC NI comedy Soft Border Patrol
Blame Game regular Neil Delamere features as 'head of virtual patrol' Niall Sweeney in new BBC NI comedy Soft Border Patrol Blame Game regular Neil Delamere features as 'head of virtual patrol' Niall Sweeney in new BBC NI comedy Soft Border Patrol

WITH the status of the Irish border still a hot topic for Brexit negotiators, new three-part BBC NI sitcom Soft Border Patrol follows the day-to-day workings of a special unit set up to monitor our post-Brexit border of the near future.

The joke here is that 'the SBP' – whose slogan is the easily misinterpreted 'We're Here For You' – are pretty much powerless to prevent any wrongdoings they encounter on the newly minted EU/UK interface.

"We patrol the border, but we're here to let you through," admits one of the hapless, maroon-clad crew.

"We're like human sieves – walking, talking colanders."

Regular SBP tasks involve investigating illegal border crossing points (such as a plank bridging the river between two farmland fields) and dusting wave after wave of newly married same-sex couples with confetti as they return to the north.

Blame Game regular Neil Delamere features as SBP's resident CCTV jockey Niall, while the on-the-ground troops – such as dim-witted bicycle patrolman Sandy (Alan Irwin) and relentlessly cheery motorised unit Tracy (Diona Doherty) and Connor (Patrick Buchanan) – are up-and-coming Irish actors you'll recognise in a 'that's her/him out of that thing we watched the other night' kind of way.

Shot in the 'mockumentary' manner of W1A et al, the show's dialogue is largely improvised. While some scenes could probably have been more ruthlessly trimmed to excise lines that didn't quite land, Soft Border Patrol's gentle attempt at topical satire is still enjoyably tittersome.

Soft Border Patrol begins on Friday March 2 on BBC One NI at 10.35pm.