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

ugh that sounds awful

when did I become so enamoured with the word grouping "sound awful"?

Is this a new version of the show or is it the same thing thats been going for years?

watched this weeks 8/10/countdown cos my lads insisted ..
fucking hell it was dire.
painful.
it was a lot better when it was the odd one off special.
turning it into a regular thing has made it desperate.
and i could quite easily live the rest of my life without ever hearing that false jimmy carr laugh again.

in other news : watched all of 'man down' in the last week.
rik mayall as the dad in season 1 was just genius, and a joy to watch.
the way they dealt with his real life death was wonderful, and brutally funny.
admittedly, some of it grated, but when it worked, damn, it worked (the interaction between greg and the kids basically).

hmm, rick mayall played greg davies' father?

I'm sure Carr's false laugh is his real laugh. He says he has trouble fading into the back of live comedy audiences because everyone recognises his laugh.

Watching this week's Catsdown right now. This guy in Dictionary Corner is the worst.

I'd say this is *not* the show to judge it on. That Natasia lass that's on is just dreadful too.

Who are the guests?

This week was some terribly unfunny lass who seemed impressed with herself for getting a three letter word, and a character comedian which is absolutely the worst form of comedy. They do sometimes have decent guests who add to the format, but this week was definitely not one of those weeks.

yeah, if the guest isn't funny and doesn't care about playing the game, there's no point in them being there (e.g. bob mortimer alternating between lazy dad jokes and not even trying to do words/sums). at least on 8/10 cats there's plenty of material for them to bounce off as comedians.

kinder:

The joe watsisface bits are tedious.

otm

Needs more actual Countdown.

otm

I think they've let up a little bit on the jokes about shagging Rachel Riley, which is a good thing I guess?

i hope they didn't let up just in response to the stalker thing.

http://www.chortle.co.uk/features/2016/08/20/25594/bbc_sitcom_season:_whats_on_when

am i wrong to think this could be pretty good? at least some of it will fall flat on its face, and really the money should not be going into rehashing the past, but some of the new angles (e.g. young hyacinth, performing a lost steptoe & son script) could be loads of fun.

Watching this week's Catsdown right now. This guy in Dictionary Corner is the worst.

truly painful to watch.

hmm, rik mayall played greg davies' father?

https://www.comedy.co.uk/tv/man_down/interview/rik_mayall/

"I would really like the opportunity to explore the character of Greg's dad fully"

8(

Fleabag episode 6 has got very dark. (Bit irritated by what looked like it may be a sentimental chink of light right at the end of the episode).

I'm not sure I like any of the characters in it very much at all, but it's still very watchable.

Yup. Thought it ended very well. Not really a sitcom though, after all. (And tbh I don't know what I would have done without that brief flash of sentimentality) Look forward to a second series, or whatever else she does.

i've finished ep 4 and fleabag has really turned into something extraordinary

bbc sitcom season anyone?

didn't bother with any of the rehashes of things that plagued my chidlhood.

Meet The Coopers - looked like an attempt at recreating Outnumbered

Home From Home - some big names, ok

Our Ex Wife - ironically one of the people on this reminds me of my ex-wife... bit too bitter and violent, i thought.

upcoming:

We The Jury - written by james acaster, who divides opinion (i like him).

Motherland - again, some big names in this. partly written by sharon horgan.

Missed Our Ex-wife, might give it a watch
Meet the Coopers was inoffensive, also thought it was like Outnumbered, not for me though

Anyone watch 'the circuit'? another Sharon Horgan thing. Wasn't quite sure what it was meant to be, a pilot I think, but not that great. I try not to judge on pilot episodes though.

Agree with The Coopers Versus The Rest and Outnumbered, but with more than a touch of the Tracey Beakers as well. I thought it was fairly inoccuous.

I have no idea how Home From Home would work as any more than a one-off and surely they've played through pretty much all the plots in the one half hour.

I quite enjoyed Our Ex Wife, but kept on confusing it with I Want My Wife Back, the recent Ben Miller vehicle. I could have seen it being picked up if the ambiguity had remained around the ex-wife but after the reveal I can't see the mileage in it.

I didn't actually mind Are You Being Served, I can't help thinking a lot of the criticism is rose coloured spectacles for exactly what the jokes were when it ran originally. And as David Lloyd pointed out in Comedy Connections, Mr Humphries has never been gay just a bit of a mummies boy. I could have done without most of the cast but Justin Edwards was great, and John Challis a cut above the rest. I don't think I'd hate a full series tbh, it was head and shoulders above Mountain Goats or The Wright Way.

Porridge was kind of pointless and dominated by the "how can we make it modern? COMPUTERS" lazy writing trope. Not a huge fan of Kevin Bishop in any case, but it was fairly sympathetic without ever entertaining.

I HATED Til Death Us Do Part. Shorn of the age, which render some of Alf's turns of phrase of their temporal context, it seemed stilted and unfunny and a poor attempt at catchphrasing. Maybe it was a poor episode. Maybe it was a poor cast. Maybe the staging was to blame. But the script was a stinker and no mistake.

I thought Kevin Bishop (who I don't particularly care for) was amiable enough to carry Porridge, which was incredibly slight but OK, as these things go. Are You Being Served was trying to hard to recreate nostalgia, though agree Challis and Edwards were good at what they had to do.

Haven't watched any of the rest of them - project for the weekend, I think.

god, british tv is making me glad that i emigrated.

Bar was set pretty low last week, but the reboot of Goodnight Sweetheart has been the best of the lot by quite some way.

omg goodnight sweetheart.

my boyhood hero: time-traveling bigamist gary sparrow

Jesus, 'The Outlaws' just got really dark
(not British btw)

leave won - get over it!

'are you being served' was masterfully done as cover versions go. the script was beautifully constructed and paced, and it even reincorporated elements for comedy value. the performances were universally great, and the set and wardrobe were spot on. every element was seamlessly faithful to the original and as a whole it just. wasn't. good.

Yes - quite enjoyed that Goodnight Sweetheart reboot.

The Telegraph agonised over the moral implications:

The show encouraged us to view it as a tragedy that our hero had not been able to continue bounding between his two families....There had been some decent gags – the bit where the time traveller materialised in an occupied toilet cubicle was genuinely funny – and Lyndhurst’s underdog charm has aged not in the least. But the slightly bullying insistence that Gary ought to have been allowed have his romantic cake and eat it left an aftertaste.

Really loving the James Acaster's Classic Scrapes youtube channel. Some of those stories are brilliant, especially the one with him trying to find condoms. Part of the fun is Josh Widdicombe shrieking with laughter.

Watched all of Fleabag in 1/2 nights (the first one passively yesterday, then again today, followed by the rest). Very good finale, am absolutely spent. A few involuntary emotional reactions to seemingly innocuous bits. I never thought a story about a kid pencilfucking a hamster would end up making me cry before.

Motherland was really good, very very funny.

After all that I forgot about the acaster sitcom.

Still have to watch Motherland. It's hard to believe it failing with Sharon Horgan and Diane Morgan behind it (except see below).

Goodnight Sweetheart was like putting on a pair of socks for the fourth time. Already shaped vaguely like they should be, and you're not sure whether it's a pleasant experience or not. Played hard on the 'fish out of water' elements, but actually in a moderately believable way - 90s Gary is effectively as divorced from the present day as he was from the 40s when he first went there. The FLASH BANG answer to put him in the modern day is of course bollocks, but gives us where a series is undoubtedly going to focus; Gary and his relationship with the daughter he didn't know he had (plus opens the door for either his daughter or son to find the way through and give us an incest plot instead of/as well as bigamy). I did like that Gary stopped playing the piano because he was getting caught out too much with the songs he was using, but why didn't he just start playing 80s songs instead? It was enjoyable enough but I really didn't need to see it and I'm not sure a series would have the legs (incest notwithstanding) to justify it.

Young Hyacinth was excellent, with a tremendous cast BUT... as I've found from the repeats on Yesterday, KUA is ENDURINGLY UNFUNNY. As a result this feels like fake nostalgia for a show nobody could like. It provides detailed explanations for Hyacinth's classist tics and barrels along quite happily in and of itself, but accordingly the humour in it comes from Hyacinth's dogged refusal to accept the circumstances of her birth even when laid bare in front of her and to a degree that is mainly funny because we know that's what she's like in KUA; except in KUA she and Richard have progressed to middle (maybe upper middle?) class and so the contradiction is different - in KUA it's about trying to break the Middle Class ceiling and is defiantly 'ideas above her station' territory. Here it's about not wanting to accept the cards life has dealt her and is supposed to be about laughing with her and not at her as she certainly isn't the figure of fun in the prequel.

We The Jury was pretty awful. A dreadful hackneyed manchild as the lead with a typical Stupid Sitcom Mum (in fact, the biggest surprise was that she wasn't played by Janine Duvitski) supported by a cast of people playing the same parts they did in other sitcoms (Kenneth Collard essentially does Grant Out Of I Want My Wife Back, which was just a rehash of Steve Out Of Cuckoo; David Schall does a watered down version of Jay's Dad, which was a partial rework of Glynn in The Office; Sophie Thompson plays the exact same mousy primary school teacher she has since Four Weddings; Oliver Maltman plays a slimy, slightly seedy guy like he did in No Heroics, Crashing, Benidorm and Cuckoo; Alexander Kirk plays a principled guy who's good at his jobs so quits rather than let sitcom shenanigans happen round him...) and it just feels all so rote. The premise of how the jury get away with all kinds of shit because it's the judge's last trial so it's like at primary school when you were allowed to bring games in is clearly contrived even for the staged circumstances of a sitcom. Kerry Howard phones in a performance as yet another kinda sexy kinda wacky kinda stupid love interest and Diane Morgan is wasted as the singer in a metal? punk? goth? band who only gets a couple of lines about how alternative and rebellious she is. Throw in a couple of ethnic tropes - young black girl is a street poet, young Asian girl is obsessed with image and style icons - and you end up with a pot mess down there with the worst of BBC Three's output.

I think Kerry Howard might be a bit overexposed tbh.

i wish Morgana Robinson were

ooer

I liked Morgana's sketch show even though I didn't laugh much, it was unusual and I thought a lot of her impressions and characters were really impressive. Her Fearne Cotton and Russel Brand were bang on.
Yes she's completely gorgeous too.

I was never that bothered about Morgana until her wonderful turn as Julie in House of Fools.

She's great at Fearne Cotton and Russell Brand, agreed, but I basically don't find her funny at all.

that fearne impression:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RiY_0_livhY

but yeah it was house of fools where i first noticed her

I also enjoyed motherland, would definitely watch the series if it was commissioned. How long do these things usually take to get decided?

This series of People Just Do Nothing has stepped up a notch, some very funny jokes.

Watched the Jury thing and yes it was disappointing.

But I did learn that court artists in the UK aren't allowed to sketch on court whereas they are in the USA

enjoyed motherland a lot.

hope that gets a proper series.

gave up after 7 minutes of the jury one.

is it series 2 of people do nothing now? the pilot was so perfect and the resulting series so poor i gave up on it, but might give it another shot

acaster's we the jury is flawed yeah. it's very much his voice, which is great in stand-up but feels disjointed and unconvincing in a sitcom. like what 'world' is it, is everyone a bit of a tool, except the blonde lady juror? but then even she turns a bit wacky. felt it didn't abide by classic comedy show rules, but in a shit awkward way rather than a wow revelation way. some ok bits but overall too pleased with itself considering the amount of duff gags. crazy high production values though, and some star turns. acaster's clearly made powerful friends. (compare & contrast to the cheapshit tv adaptation of funz and gamez which sucked all the joy and intimacy from the amazing live show)

as for james acaster's classic scrapes, i checked out the bus fight with group of lads one and am i missing something? a fairly dull story, embellished with crap corny fake bits, soundtracked by plummy guffaws from a panel of awful oxbridge grads. "yeah alastair, watch your mouth" << where's the joke? is it that the other guy would put his dick in the mouth? pissfuckingpoor, not worth telling down the pub let alone a backslappy podcast. ain't hating, seen acaster live a bunch of times and always love it but this latest output is dire

oh yeah, a telling moment when widdicombe talks about some 'youths' getting on his bus and spraying mace so he walked to a different section of the bus, punctuating this nothingy anecdote with "a win for the educated!" because in widdicombe world only council scum commit crime

Motherland was pretty great, although I'm not 100% sure we need another "the working class are the only ones that can get shit done" comedy.

The remade Hancock has probably been the most successful show of the entire season, even if Katy Wix wasn't very good in it.

is it series 2 of people do nothing now? the pilot was so perfect and the resulting series so poor i gave up on it, but might give it another shot

― NI, Saturday, 10 September 2016 16:19 (two hours ago)

They're on series 3 now. The first two were only intermitently funny imo, this one has been hitting the spot pretty consitently.

as I've found from the repeats on Yesterday, KUA is ENDURINGLY UNFUNNY. As a result this feels like fake nostalgia for a show nobody could like.

I love love love Keeping Up Appearances. this may be somewhat down to contextual factors - that I watched it a lot as a kid for one thing, but especially that it reminds me of my own family; the world Keeping Up Appearances is set in is feels more reminiscent of the world I grew up in than pretty much any other sitcom setting. I do think it's a genuinely great show as well, though.

I haven't seen Young Hyacinth yet but it looks interesting. this had totally passed me by , but apparently there was a stage version a couple of years ago with one of Hale & Pace playing Onslow:

http://i35.servimg.com/u/f35/14/45/43/72/pictur23.jpg