Rolling UK Comedy Thread - "Ricky Don't Lose Larry David's Number

Witness, the BBCIIi vehicle for Russell Howard's sister, is really pretty awful.

Two Doors Down, on the other hand, is the best thing the BBC Scotland Comedy Unit have made in years.

Or is it Witless? Either way, only death can save it.

Was I the only one who watched (and liked) Siblings?

No, I saw it a few times, thought it was OK.

witless has a great premise but is just shite

The deaf/lesbian bit in the last ep was a new low.

gave up on witless after episode 1 - truly awful.

siblings : made me chuckle from time to time.

two doors down : several proper belly laughs - need to catch up on recent episodes.

flowers : very dark, and at times quite upsetting, but in the end wonderful tv.

I think the good parts of Siblings were all Charlotte Ritchie - she was genuinely dislikeable and self-centred and from thence the comedy arose. But the brother was frankly pointless; I really don't need to see another boy/child/idiot again.

Russell Howard's sister was also in his awful Bristolian Christmas thing, she really does get given for nepotistic reasons pick the shit jobs.

witless has a great premise but is just shite

the premise is pretty similar to Simon Day's 2003 sitcom Grass, which was great but seems to be totally forgotten (also The Green Green Grass)

Upstart Crow?

took about 15 minutes before the ben elton-ness of it started annoying me.

Ben Elton thread

is the windsors as terrible as it looks?

elevenish any good? chewing gum?

> Ben Elton thread

yeah, but then i might see / hear / read more of his work

Cunk On Shakespeare, BBC2 tonight @ 22:00

Chewing Gum is great, Eleven-ish needs some time to grow but has some inspired bits, and please watch Julia Davis' CAMPING

> Cunk On Shakespeare

was great.

written by brooker and the two blokes who did those adult ladybird books that were everywhere at christmas.

Are they donating their fee to Miriam Elia?

Just finished Flowers. Not really a comedy, but really really wonderful.

Phil Wang did a good job of HIGNIFY for an unknown too.

the ladybird books thing is odd. ladybird's first impulse was to sue the original author, the one with the idea, but then they did 6 or 8 themselves a year later. the guys were on the radio saying that ladybord couldn't've been more helpful, gave them access to the entire picture catalogue and all and applied very little editorial pressure (iirc). i guess ladybird realised it was profitable. and they did a good job of the one i read (hangover)

nu-ladybird guys are two of the framley examiner team fwiw

I get that the success of Miriam Elia's thing is likely what gave Penguin the notion that a serious of nu-ladybird could be profitable, but the idea of re-doing old children's books with coarse/knowing/"subversive" captions is hardly an original one anyway? I don't really get the "they should give their fee to Elia" argument

Been watching Richard Herring's interview show on YouTube a lot. I actually find it funnier and more satisfying than most comedy shows. Quite a lot of interesting stuff comes up too.
Sarah Kendall and Limmy interviews were great.
Recently listened to the Greg Davies, Cariad Lloyd, Josie Long and Sara Pascoe interviews and all were really enjoyable.
Josie Long's story about the car crash she was in is incredible. Cariad Lloyd's talk about tv channels and audiences not willing to give new comedy a chance anymore was also interesting.

Not a lot of Davies love on this forum but I think he's really funny on interviews (on Graham Norton recently) and panel shows (haven't seen much of his actual scripted shows) and I thought his routine about the taxi driver was fantastic.

Is this 'RHLSTP'? I watched a bunch of old ones when I was on mat leave, they were great (Ben Goldacre, Victoria Mitchell etc, spring to mind, they're given the space to just shoot the shit and it really works). Haven't caught up on any in the past year or so though.

Yeah it's RHLSTP

Just finished Flowers - as above it's lovely and pitch black, but I'm not in favour of any definition of comedy that excludes it. It'd be unbearable if you didn't know Shun was the writer, I accept. Reminds me a bit of The Lobster, the film earlier this year with Colin Farrell and Rachel Weisz.

Oh, I was reading about that just now, The Lobster sounds amazing

new As Yet Untitled starts this saturday and a second series of TaskMaster in a couple of weeks (entirely new team)

Yay and yay. Is this new Taskmaster the one with Dave Gorman on it? (I could look this up, I know...)

They did list all they new contestants but i want really paying attention. Will rewind the PVR later and have another look. Actually, I think Richard Osman was one of them.

The list of people on untitled did sound star-studded but often it's the unexpected people that are the best value.

Jon Richardson
Joe Wilkinson
Catherine Ryan
Doc Brown
Richard Osman

That could be good. Not a fan of Brown or Wilkinson, but you never know. Tim Key was unexpectedly hilarious on the last outing. Jon Richardson's meltdowns will be gold/really irritating.

Armando Iannuci's Radio 1 shows from 1994 are back up for a few weeks:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007jzbt

still totally holds up imo

not sure what i expected from jack dee's referendum thing last night. wasn't particularly balanced from what i saw (only caught the last 10 minutes). or, indeed, funny.

upstart crow thing was better, because macbeth.

I thought the panel was good on Jack Dee, but the audience not so much, especially the "too many brown faces, our kids won't be speaking English in schools" woman who thought this an appropriate point to direct towards Romesh Ranganathan and Anita Rani. And the audience member banging on about kicking people out of the country to reduce the pressure on the NHS clearly hadn't been told she was on a light-hearted comedy panel show either. Henning Wehn, who is always good value on these sorts of things, pointing out that there'd be no-one working there either was good, if obvious.

It is hard to play these sort of things for laughs though when the questions are either serious Brexiters have serious issues, or people pretending to give a shit about whether Starbursts should be renamed Opal Fruits.

Jeremy Corbyn guesting on the Last Leg on Friday.

Corbyn was terrible...

As Yet Untitled appears to be on every day this week.

The Alex guy seemed familiar. Think he might've done a couple of Josie Long's nights a couple of years ago.

Some weapons-grade name-dropping going on last night

Yes, Corbyn was not good. The Last Leg twitternet seemed to love him, but I think he basically got a free pass for being Jeremy Corbyn, but it didn't make for good telly. Neither did the deathly silence when Russell Crowe appeared to think that Noel Edmonds isn't a completely fraudulent Ickeian wanker. Also they're the last show I'd expect to make a cheap gag about Britney Spears' mental health issues.

I thought Corbyn was alright, did about as well as a politician appearing on that kind of show can do. a bit dull, but that's probably better than trying to be funny and failing. I did like how blunt he was about not feeling obliged to make faux polite chit-chat with Cameron (or Blair), idk if this comes across as churlish to a lot of ppl though? ranking himself as 7.5 out of 10 on how passionate he is about the UK staying in the EU seemed like something of an unforced error.

should probably I've never seen The Last Leg before and only watched it because Corbyn was on, and I didn't think that the non-Corbyn stuff was very good (Johnny Vegas arm wrestling Richard Fairbrass aside), so I'm probably not the best judge of whether JC was dragging the quality down

Andrew Lawrence is enjoying the EU result at least

https://twitter.com/andrewlawrence/status/746224504351776769

Goddamn it, every time I manage to successfully forget Andrew Lawrence exists he pops up again...

I'm sure his Edinburgh show will go down very well this year.

Taskmaster is back and ie entertaining although they should've banned mobile phones on a couple of the tasks.

Funnier than that, though, is Child Genius.

The nursery rhyme video task was amazing, and I don't think I've laughed so much in ages as I did at the very simple comedy sight of Joe Wilkinson looking pissed off at a ball rolling down a hill. But yeah, mobile phones made a couple of them too easy.

other cheating i haven't liked in Taskmaster:

getting the swede to spell out his answers (he wasn't allowed to *talk* english, there was nothing about spelling out the answers in english)

putting the rabbit hats on the floor. (however, osman's similar 'on top of the mat on top of the hill' workaround was quite funny. and props that they got susie dent to adjudicate on that. it plays into my opinion that all these comedians go around each others houses / on holiday together all the time)

conversely, the potato stacking challenge judgement (last night) was too harsh.

much as i like r osman, Child Genius really doesn't need a celebrity questionmaster. the joy of it is in the odd kids and their batshit parents.

I'm hesitant to say it, because I wouldn't want anyone to think it meant I hated him, but I think I might have seen enough Richard Osman now.

He's this year's Romesh Ranganathan. It'll pass when the powers that be latch onto someone else to put on absolutely everything.

i came late to Man Down (i saw series 2, series 3 started yesterday) but i like the farce aspect to it.

It's enjoyably silly but a but hit and miss. Probably averages a couple of belly laughs per episode though, which is a decent rate.

the drama class scenes are great. the shouty kid is the focus of an episode in the second series, iirc.

just catching up on the first series and the casting of rik mayall as his dad is spot on. and his mum is mrs mcklusky from grange hill...

Just watched yesterday's ep, they seem to have upped their game a bit. Stephen Berkoff!