Jack Whitehall reacts after Netflix viewer spots unfortunate blunder in new show Fatherhood With My Father
Comedian stars with his dad Michael in new Netflix show about first-time fatherhood
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Your support makes all the difference.Jack Whitehall joked that “someone’s getting fired” after his new show accidentally aired footage of a picturesque harbour in the Caribbean, instead of one in Falmouth, Cornall.
Fatherhood With My Father, the Netflix series starring the comedian and his father, Michael, made the blunder while the duo were visiting the advanced robotics studio Engineered Arts in the second episode.
After meeting Ameca, regarded as the world’s most cutting-edge humanoid robot, Jack announced that it was time to go to the pub: “As Cornwall’s rave music and chemsex scene is pretty sparse.”
As his voiceover aired, various shots of Falmouth were shown... including an aerial shot of the lush green hills, blue waters and yachts of Falmouth Habour on the island of Antigua.
“As a resident of Falmouth I feel slightly misrepresented by Mr Whitehall and his team,” one viewer complained.
Whitehall, 36, responded: “Oops. Someone’s getting fired in the morning. Using shots of Barbados and trying to pass them off as Cornwall.”
Malcolm Bell, chief executive of Visit Cornwall, told The Times: “Wee can have azure seas and glorious days too, but it’s the number of palm trees that is the difference.”
He said that the tourism trade in Cornwall this year has been “depressed and sluggish”, following a report in October last year that suggested Brits holidaying abroad could hit record numbers in 2024.
However, he doubted that many would be offended by the episode error: “Any news about Falmouth is good news to be talked about and people will then see images of the real Falmouth.”
He added: “In these quite worrying days it’s nice to have something to laugh about.”
In Jack Whitehall: Fatherhood With My Father, the comedian prepares for a future of parenting by exploring how people around the world approach the topic of aging and mortality.
Whitehall and his partner Roxy Horner welcomed their first child, a daughter named Elsie, in September 2023.
In a two-star review of the show in The Independent, Katie Rosseinsky criticised what she deemed as yet more “generation-gap banter” as Whitehall and his father take part in a series of “increasingly bizarre activities, with an increasingly tenuous link to parenting”.
“The format doesn’t give them space to actually cover much emotional mileage either,” she wrote. “Both men are too tied up with their japes to ever really get stuck into a proper chat about what makes a good parent; Roxy and Jack’s mother, the likeably no-nonsense Hilary, are often reduced to rolling their eyes at the silly men from the sidelines.”
She concluded: “The most profound it gets is during an episode all about longevity when Michael suggests that his son would be better off just spending time with his child rather than messing around with biohacking in an attempt to prolong his life.
“It’s hard not to draw similar conclusions from the show overall. Surely the best way to learn about parenting is to, well, do some, rather than squabbling in the metaverse with your elderly dad.”
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