Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Code 404’ On Peacock, A Comedy About A Cop That’s Reborn With Technology, But He Has A Screw Loose

When a police procedural or action show positions itself as a comedy, it gets difficult to balance the action and laughs. The comedy has to come out of the characters if it’s going to work. The less you know about those characters, the more the writers have to rely on gags to get by. Code 404 is a cop comedy that involves a top cop coming back from the dead via technology, but he’s not quite himself. Can the show be a decent cop procedural and be funny?

CODE 404: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Nighttime outside of an industrial site. “London. 2:16 AM. A few years from now.”

The Gist: DI John Major (Daniel Mays) is undercover on a weapons buy, with his partner, DI Roy Carver (Stephen Graham) in the van monitoring the surveillance. They’re both members of an elite investigative division, and John is that division’s best detective. While trying to get the info they need to get to the dealer’s boss, the two partners banter over something that John saw when he walked in on his wife Kelly (Anna Maxwell Martin) and Roy. But then John’s cover is blown, and in the ensuing fight, John is shot and doesn’t make it.

In the hospital, while Roy and Kelly mourn over John, DCS Dennett (Rosie Cavaliero), whisks the body out, with Dr. Alison Parfit (Amanda Payton) telling her that the body is “84% viable.”

A year later, Roy is at John’s grave, apologizing for what he did and saying he feels guilty, when suddenly someone surprises him from behind. After a tussle, he sees John’s face. How can that be? Turns out that, as their best cop, DCS Dennett thought John was worth saving, so he was the first officer to go through Dr. Parfit’s experimental revival procedures, where organs are transplanted and an AI module meshes with John’s own neural net.

John seems like himself, but something’s off. For one, he immediately expects to move back into the house he and Kelly shared; what he doesn’t realize is that Roy moved in with Kelly soon after John’s death. John doesn’t seem to know how to do certain things that are second nature, Dr. Parfit tells Roy to watch for strange behavior, as she doesn’t want their program “shut down” because it doesn’t work.

But for the most part, it seems that John’s judgement is a bit off. When they try to track down who shot John, they visit druggie Liam Cleasby (Richard Gadd), the drug dealer who was there that night. Thinking that he’s impervious to drugs, John snorts up a facefull of Cleasby’s supply, which of course leads him to get super high. During a sting on a rooftop car park, John throws up in Roy’s car, gets it in his mind that Roy is the mastermind behind his shooting, and essentially pushes him off the railing of the car park. All the while, Cleasby and his supplier flee the scene.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Code 404 has the same silly tone as Peacock’s other two British comedy imports: Intelligence and Hitmen. All of them are trying to subvert a traditional action-oriented genre with general ineptness and silliness.

Our Take: It’s tempting to write off Code 404 after the first episode, which tries to be silly in between all the action scenes. But what is supposed to be a raucous action-farcefest ends up being a bit boring and not all that funny. But Mays and Graham are superior actors and ace comedic actors, which makes us hopeful that this idea will gel during its six-episode first season.

Why doesn’t the first episode work? Probably because there’s much that’s undefined. We know that this is the near future, but there’s no context as to what’s going on in London or with policing during this near-future time. Only a few hints show that we’re not dealing with the here-and-now.

But what really feels like a missed opportunity is giving a tiny bit more of the backstory of John and Roy’s partnership and friendship. Why is John considered the best cop in their elite unit? Why did Roy and Kelly get together? Has this been going on for a long time? There isn’t a whole lot of context to compare what went on before John was killed and after he was revived. That lack of context makes the jokes about John being off or Roy and Kelly having to hide their relationship fall flat, because there’s no reference point to lean on.

We didn’t need much of a background, just more than the five minutes we got. That being said, Mays does a great job playing John with a screw loose, a guy who thinks he’s still the great cop he was before he was killed but likely isn’t. The longer we go in this season, the more examples we’ll see of John putting Roy in danger because he thinks he’s doing some great police work instead of just running off half-cocked. It’s also a great commentary on how technology is always a work in progress; John’s in a trial period as someone who’s now only 90% human, because the police department has no idea how this will turn out.

All of that will be fun to explore, but we’re not sure if any of that will be touched on during the first season.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: John visits Roy in the hospital, and he tells his partner that he pinned this mess-up on Roy. After appealing to Roy’s sense of loyalty and guilt, Roy relents. As John leaves the hospital, Cleasby is seen staking him out, telling someone on the phone that he played dumb.

Sleeper Star: No one stands out, so we’ll give this to Michelle Greenidge, who plays an officer everyone thinks is named Judy, even though she insists she isn’t.

Most Pilot-y Line: “Dr. Parfit will explain. She’s an American,” DCS Dennett says to Roy. Not even sure what that joke means.

Our Call: SKIP IT. Despite the presence of Graham and Mays, Code 404 just isn’t funny enough or interesting enough to spend any time watching.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.

Stream Code 404 On Peacock