The circus features a husband and wife clown team (Thomson and Thompson), who aren't as funny as they believe they are, and Erasmus (Robinson) is a cynical soundman.

Georgie (Madoc) is the grande dame of Circus Maestro, and Boyco (Mackinnon) is an east European acrobat who is still learning about the ways of the English world.

In a review of the opening episode, Michael Deacon in The Daily Telegraph described it as "unfunny and outdated", saying that "the cast weren’t so much playing characters as reading aloud from a dog-eared joke book for half an hour.

"[6] Sam Wollaston of The Guardian commented that the jokes were so obvious that he invented a game, whereby he would pause the show after the set up and ask his girlfriend to guess the punchline.

[8] The harsh criticism that the sitcom received, and the likelihood that it would be axed after one season, led to its being used as a cipher on Richard Bacon's BBC 6Music show during 2009–10.