Season Review: The Golden Cobra Season One

Overview

The Golden Cobra is an animated British comedy set in the town of Ebbw Vale in Wales. Much of the series revolves around the titular Indian take-out restaurant run by the hot-headed Basil whose business is failing because of his own incompetence and the competing food business over the road.

Over the course of 8 episodes, we discover why Basil’s restaurant is considered the worst takeaway in Wales. We also meet other residents of the town, including Nick, a fresh-out-of-prison father-of-one who tries to be a role model to his son with less-than-successful results.

Our Take

McDonald’s is hardly the best fast-food restaurant in the world but when you buy a Big Mac from the venue, you can at least be confident in knowing you’re eating real meat and not a grossly concocted substitute. The same cannot be said of The Golden Cobra, the titular takeout of this low-budget animated series which serves food that could (and indeed does in the first episode) cause a fatality. Mashed-up gerbil and goldfish is the meat hybrid of choice for this Indian restaurant, which isn’t something you’d expect to bite into when eating a burger!

It’s little wonder that The Golden Cobra is labeled the “worst restaurant in Wales,” as is written in the synopsis for this animated sitcom. In the first episode, it is visited by a health inspector named Rose West (presumably a reference to the British serial killer) who turns up unexpectedly and sends Basil (Bas to his friends) into a tailspin. The fact that there’s a dead rat in the restaurant surrounded by bloody entrails and a vat of curry made from the aforementioned ingredients doesn’t help his state of mind when he tries to avert her attention away from the distinct lack of hygiene and proper food storage habits in his kitchen.

Basil is not the kind of person who should be running a takeout business. Not only does his food taste like garbage (an ingredient he uses in a later episode) but his leadership style is trashy too, due to his lack of consideration for his staff. One of his employees is the put-upon Nick, who works as his delivery driver. Nick is sometimes joined by his son Rhys, a timid young lad who, in one episode, runs afoul of a blind customer named Bennett who has a grudge against Nick because of a (literally) eye-popping incident that occurred in a bar years before. We won’t go into details here just in case you’re of a squeamish disposition!

You’re unlikely to warm to any of these characters as they’re as two-dimensional as the crude animation technique used to create them. They’re paper-thin, almost like cardboard cutouts, with oversized body parts (one schoolgirl has a balloon head on a much smaller body) and exaggerated facial features. The animation is as stiff as their appearance, with little in the way of realism when they move from A to B in each scene. They shuffle along using their feet, without any movement in their legs, almost as if the animators forgot to bless them with joints and leg bones!

The simplistic animation isn’t a hindrance to the program. In fact, it’s part of its low-budget charm. At times it resembles a newspaper cartoon strip or a hastily cobbled-together drawing from a caricature artist. In relation to the latter, it’s worth pointing out that some of the characters in the series may be based on real people. Adam Llewellyn, who co-created The Golden Cobra with his friends James Prygodzicz and Tom Rees, came up with a Facebook competition to promote the original incarnation of the show which was screened on YouTube under the title The Vale.

In an interview, he said:

“A clever thing we did was this competition where we said ‘if you share the show on Facebook or whatever we’ll draw you and put you into an episode’… we ended up doing about 100 people.” (source)

We’re pretty certain nobody in real life looks exactly like some of the people we meet in The Golden Cobra. There’s one woman whose legs are spaced so far apart that she has to walk like a crab, for example. There’s another person whose face looks like that of a frog, with an incredibly high chin and eyes that are lifted above his forehead. We appreciate all kinds of people use Facebook (other social media platforms are available) but we’re guessing their various body and facial features have been embellished upon if they have been chosen to appear in the series.

The show’s humor is as crude as the animation style. If you’re somebody who finds a naked body funny and laugh hysterically when characters fart and defecate, then you’ll find much to enjoy here. Complex the storylines are not, so there’s little from the series that will give you food for thought because of a life-changing message. The sole goal of the program’s creators is to put a smile on your face, though it’s possible you’ll have less to chuckle about if you’re unfamiliar with Welsh stereotypes. There’s one visual gag featuring a sheep with a man’s head, for example, which is in reference to the practice of bestiality that allegedly (but probably doesn’t) takes place between men and sheep in Wales.

The Golden Cobra is easily bingeable as the 8 episodes are between 12-14 minutes long. But whether or not you’ll stick with the show will depend on how funny you think it is and how tolerant you are to the gross nature of some of the humor, which includes one “comic” scene of a character getting a bike pole stuck up his butt. If you’re of a sensitive nature or are somebody who doesn’t enjoy low-brow comedy, then you might want to steer clear. This is the animated equivalent of an American Pie or Porky’s movie with none of the clever messaging you might get from a show like Bojack Horseman or Rick and Morty.

That isn’t to say the show’s creators aren’t intelligent. Incorporated into the series are visual and musical references to such movies as The Shining and The Hills Have Eyes, which is evidence of their love and knowledge of films. Their writing might come across as juvenile and puerile, but I suspect this is purposeful, as they seem to be aiming for cheap laughs with comical potshots at the Welsh people rather than high art.

I didn’t find The Golden Cobra to be laugh-out-loud funny but I’m sure there will be some people who might, especially those who want nothing more than simple entertainment while downing a beer on a Friday night and tucking into their own takeout curry (hopefully one that is free of goldfish and rodents).

In the UK, The Golden Cobra is currently available to stream on BBC iPlayer. Viewers across the pond can expect to see it on a streaming service at some point but at the time of writing, I’m unsure whereabouts it might land.