Reception
Reception to the first episode "A Snail" was mixed in the British press. The Guardian Guide found the programme "mundane and dated", Lucy Mangan also of The Guardian said "the kind of stuff that would barely have passed muster in the 70s all the jokes are spatchcocked into a wafer-thin plot that veers uncertainly between reality and surreality, this particular experiment can only be deemed a failure.". Tim Teeman writing in The Times said "Lab Rats is a truly appalling new sit-com Bad puns, redundant characters, lame jokes Not even the best surgeon in the land could save this." (0/5 stars)
However Robert Hanks in The Independent said "remarkable for its combination of very silly jokes and rather well-researched evolutionary theory. The cast is good. The plot of last night's episode was pleasantly absurdist, the jokes were commendably odd and wide-ranging Somehow, though, it didn't quite gel, largely because of the studio audience, whose laughter, as so often, slowed things down and underlined jokes that needed to be thrown away Worth giving it a week or two, though." Robert Collins of The Daily Telegraph gave it his critic's choice, calling it "likeable, madcap comedy a catalytic reaction of Red Dwarf and The IT Crowd, in a solution of Are You Being Served? And it's not a bad formula."
Visitors to the British Comedy Guide website voted Lab Rats as the "Worst New British TV Sitcom" of 2008 in its annual awards, with the website saying that: "The idea behind the show may have been good (to bring back silly studio-based sitcom to the BBC), but the execution was anything but good. An awful, awful comedy."
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