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

nobody's mentioned david walliams' new show yet...

is that because it barely registers as comedy?

(i caught 5 minutes of the jack whitehall one. felt like i'd fallen into a timewarp)

What was that all about in that Frankie Boyle show when he ended by putting his bunnet on and saying he had better things to do than entertain strangers?

okay the reference to pat butcher being david bowie persona known as ziggy fag ash made me laugh a lot. philomena cunk/barry shitpeas always a pleasure as well.

incidently is barry shitpeas the taxi driver in the 'go compare' tv ad?

taxi driver in the 'go compare' tv ad is played by Howard Devoto iirc

I've enjoyed a lot of the Christmas specials perhaps more than I was expecting. Mock the week springs to mind as a pleasant surprise.

it was funny but mostly depressing. not brooker's fault. I just wasn't ready to revisit that shitrag of a year yet, nor to confront the fact things are probably going to get worse.

Susan Calman was on Richard Herring's show for the second time, it was really funny.

http://www.chortle.co.uk/news/2017/02/01/26765/philomena_cunk_set_to_return

She said her ideas for 2017 include Cunk on punk, Cunk on modern art and Cunk on Jane Austen, saying with Cunk-like imprecision: ‘Apparently there’s an anniversary coming up this year of her birth or death or something or the day she had her first… I don’t know.’

Aww yes that's nice

Simon Munnery was brilliant on Richard Herring's youtube show. Good stories, quite drunk.

Catastrophe back on tuesday. i find it slightly too mean-spirited for my tastes (like fleabag) but...

As Yet Untitled back on the same night on Dave. and Bob Mortimer is always good value.

(oh, AYU started last week by all accounts)

Yeah, Alan Davies was on the Last Leg on Friday talking about AYU. Agree about Bob Mortimer, he's always a treat on those sort of things.

Ugh, Alan Davies.

Watched the first episode of BBC3 mockumentary series This Country, about life in a very Real England village - and it's not too bad, surprisingly. Worth checking out, anyway.

I keep seeing clips of that, looks like if Gareth from the Office got his own sitcom?

Ah, that must be the thing that we saw the trailer for and thought someone had put Mackenzie Crook in a time machine then. Might give it a bash.

That looks a bit too close to home, literally.

The comparisons of This Country to The Office are understandable, especially when the lead character resembles and sounds like Gareth. Unlike The Office, though, it doesn't rely on comedy of excruciating embarrassment; it's kind of lighter, sillier. It's daft. I've only watched the first episode, so who knows, but I think the brother and sister team who write and star in it appear to have talent, anyway.

I live very near where This Country is set.
its incredibly close.
first episode didn't really do much for me, but episodes 2 and 3 i seriously laughed a lot ..

I saw the tin of sweets clip on youtube, it seemed both funny and sweet (and not at all slumming, though I'm no great judge of that).

Really wish that Spine Chillers came out on dvd. Only seen the first episode and it was very funny.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KznmiLqltA

Do we talk about stand-up in here too?

My gf's sister was in town and wanted to see some comedy, so we took her to the Union Chapel. I knew it was gonna be a bit more normcore than my usual faves, but wasn't aware of how TERRIBLE Ardal O'Hanlon's stand-up is - like being lectured at by the most generic man possible for half an hour. Trump is bad, holding doors isn't sexist, restaurants should put stuff on plates, baristas shouldn't draw in your coffee. I know his post "Father Ted" career has been pretty dire, but at least there I could think "oh well, bad choices, actors gotta eat".

Never known what Stewart Lee sees in his stand-up

ardal o'hanlon used to be the compere on some bbc stand up show on saturday nights after motd in the 90s, even as a child easily amused by any sort of comedy i found him a bit bad and boring.

Stewart Lee's a fan? That's insane, the set I saw almost seemed like a strawman of what Lee would rage against.

that is quite bizarre if true

So my girlfriend and I watched Fleabag, steadily but slowly over the past few weeks, and just finished tonight. It wasn't comedy as was noted above, but it was something quite good indeed.

Thought this was going to be a comment on the last Catastrophe, complete with Carrie Fisher generally stealing the show.

I meant to resurrect this thread to talk about how perfect the ending was, and how great Carrie Fisher was.

Ned, season 2 of Fleabag is coming as well :)

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/fleabag-season-2-confirmed-release-air-date-phoebe-waller-bridge-a7639251.html

So I noticed, but right now first on the to-do list will be a watch of the new season of Chewing Gum when we can.

As yet Untitled was v enjoyable last night.

Taskmaster starts again soon too.

"Lolly Adefope, Hugh Dennis, Noel Fielding, Mel Giedroyc and Joe Lycett are in Taskmaster Series 4"

Picard surprisingly bad as HIGNFY host.

new Taskmaster is on tuesday nights.

apart from misreading half his cards, i didn't think he was terrible

I can't stand the fucker generally, and this strengthened that position.

he sounds more like brian blessed than ever

He was rather shouty wasn't he?

Osman always good value.

osman's great.

recently i heard an interview with jimmy carr in which he said panel show participants should (but sometimes don't) prepare properly: for cats does countdown do a few letter/number puzzles, for qi read some knowledgy/sciency websites, etc. osman clearly does his homework and treats the gig like a professional performance, which is why he keeps getting booked.

Also, he's an executive producer in Endemol.

yeah, he co-creates a lot of these formats, and he claims to have invented survivor (!)

I don't understand the Osman love tbf. He's always affable and I can't hold anything against him, but he also almost never makes me laugh. That whole ep was quite dispiriting.

I had to sstand up at a Shappi Khorsandi gig once to let him get to his seat. He was very apologetic and gave me a kindly "yeah, how's it going?" look while I was in the netherworld between "wait, I know that guy" and "oh, because he's on the telly".

he also almost never makes me laugh.

He rarely gives me a belly laugh, but very consistently makes me chuckle, which is much more than most panel show seat fillers can manage.

yeah, his role isn't really to be the funny guy. he's more likely to share a panel with ayoade, bea, lee mack etc on the comedy shows, and with more subdued people on the fact-based shows where knowledge/trivia ranks higher. if everyone were on johnny vegas's level it's all get tedious pretty quickly.

also, he's good at less obvious things like knowing when to shut up and let others speak, which can be the difference between these shows working and flopping. being rock solid is (imo) why he gets booked for loads of first episodes including the fake news show, insert name here (as a team captain) and this year's hignfy.

it's it'd all get tedious pretty quickly

i mean he also comes with dad jokes, but everyone's expected to be at least 20% funny on these shows unless they're kate williams or gyles brandreth or something

His dad jokes are of a pretty high quality.

Also Pointless is my favourite quiz show of all time so he gets a vast ammount of residual affection for that.

yeah, pointless was excellent right from the start and has stayed good through all sorts of changes, quite astonishing