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

I think the Alan Partridge one was the first and there was a Fast Show one too?

Catastrophe starts again tonight on ch4. the last series, iirc, was more arguing than comedy but i'll give it another go.

this is generally a bugbear of mine too, fwiw, that writers think bickering and arguing between couples is interesting or amusing to watch but Catastrophe was one of the rare examples that pulled it off, imo.

Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf is another example.

Both leads on Catastrophe are so likable and funny that the sloppy writing is excusable.

is the windsors as terrible as it looks?

― (main prostitute from Game Of Thrones) (bizarro gazzara), Wednesday, 11 May 2016 17:32 (two years ago) Permalink

The Windsors has turned out to be one of the best Brit comedies of the last few years IMO. The Richard Branson thing they're doing now is pretty good, too.

I tried Flowers and couldn't really cope with it: the forced eccentricity on every inch of the screen and in the script left me no room to breathe. It had the whiff of farce about it, too. Does it calm down?

i wouldn't know

my interest in the whimsical sadness of posh eccentrics ran its course for me halfway through my second wes anderson movie

No, Flowers doesn't calm down. If anything it gets worse.

Ta for the tip on The Windsors, I had been avoiding it.

latepass for Stath Lets Flats here - lovely stuff, proper Cypriots, proper slapstick, I lolled

This season of Catastrophe is so weird!!

- It looks like it's shot in LA. the locations are recognisably London, but everything is suffused with a golden-hour glow and the saturation looks like it's been subtly amped

- Everyone's hair looks better, and everything in general just looks more expensive (but this always happens on successful sitcoms)

- the two leads are written as over-broad dickheads when.. i didn't really see them that way before? Everyone's a Seinfeldian asshole now??

- Ashley Jensen as Fran is my favourite character now

- tho when it's just Horgan and Delaney they still got it

director of S1-S3 moved on to do Sex Education

yeah. there's something lifeless about it now tbh

It looks like it's shot in LA.

Most of the locations are walking distance from my house so I'd never think this.

The quality has been patchy since the first season imo, this one no more or less. Thinly written but well performed. Always very watchable.

i did say it's recognisably London - but it's always sunny! it's like there's some kind of Instagram filter they've applied to it

Where is the big park where Rob confronted the youths?

Sharon being a dick to the kid who was afraid of her was totally out of character, I guess they were going for a seinfeld/larry david awkwardness thing but it really didn't work.

Where is the big park where Rob confronted the youths?

Shoreditch Park - very recognisable from that wheel sculpture thing. Actually a fairly small park!

Oh and re:

i did say it's recognisably London - but it's always sunny!

Judging from the state of the grass it was filmed last summer, so that's real genuine heatwave sunshine.

Currently being dug up (this is a safe bet for many London parks but it's also true, my commute takes me past there)

Last night's Imagine about Jo Brand was fairly good and has some interesting stuff about her childhood and teenage years.

But only an hour long. I'm sure other episodes of imagine are more like 90 minutes

(and was that Sandi toksvig in the two second clip of the comedy store? And who was she with?)

oh christ

If it wasn’t for Winston Churchill, I wouldn’t have the right to say really annoying things on Twitter. pic.twitter.com/39ED1xJ3J6

— Ricky Gervais (@rickygervais) January 30, 2019

> (and was that Sandi toksvig in the two second clip of the comedy store? And who was she with?)

09:29 here - https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0c1wkzc/imagine-2019-2-jo-brand-no-holds-barred

Simon McBurney from Complicité?

I think it might be Richard Branch.

*Vranch*

God, there's a name from the dim and distant past.

it was McBurney in the clip. If you google Simon McBurney Comedy Store it lists a quote from Sandi Toksvig's website although the link itself is dead.

Nerds!

(Thanks)

Is Two Doors Down supposed to be a comedy? They should put some jokes in it if so.

i am interested in seeing how Catastrophe deals with pricess leia dying, but not really anything else.

loved the opening to catastrophe ep 4, excellent and shocking use of a usually tiresome device.

So we never did do a separate thread for Catastrophe.

That's how you do a finale.

Happy to wait to discuss as spoilers are pretty crucial, but in retrospect the US trailer for Amazon Prime is full of clues to how it ends.

that ending
I feel like the other "surprise" is always a copout device in final episodes of shows.

Had we met 'Pat' before or were we meant to know who he was or why Rob hated him other than he got pally with the mom?

I don't know, but I couldn't remember if Rob hated Feargal that much in the previous series either. The ending was super dark right? It wasn't just a metaphor, maaaan.

Rob hated Feargal, yes. It all had to do with the timeshares (that it turned out in S4 were a long con by him).

I got the impression that Pat was much pallier with the mum than you're suggesting, that it was a long term situation and only concluded when the mother got wise. I actually initially thought he was the father of at least one of them, mainly because I can't remember the plot about the father.

There was a shot at the end which focused on the clothes on the beach which made me think that the end is a metaphorical tribute to Reginald Perrin and the decisions they have made about Rob's job will make them metaphorically new (and, implicitly, better) people (they hope).

I think I need to rewatch to see if Sharon looks at the sign at any point. Rob certainly does but maybe Sharon doesn't see it which would make it his decision?

Wait, I was confusing Pat with the Trump stand in (who *is* the dad?).

Pat just represents all the gaps Rob thinks he has in his life. The fact he was there for Rob's mum when Rob wasn't just makes his lack of self-worth more evident and he has to project his guilt somewhere. He's done it through the series - remember when he pulled Dave out of sobriety because he needed someone to get wasted with, but somehow it was Dave's fault?

yellow guy was their dad, right? but he'd not been around that much. weird casting, he totally pulled me out of the whole thing, looked like a character off of the Mighty Boosh

whereas Pat was perfectly cast for the script referring to him as Guy Smiley

But I think that's who new, sober Rob wants to be and maybe always did.

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2019/feb/16/andrew-scott-fleabag-sexy-priest-uncharted-territory
Fleabag series 2 date is listed at the bottom of that - March 4th.

Pat just represents all the gaps Rob thinks he has in his life.

Also to contrast with what appeared to be Sharon's monstrous insensitivity with all the "do you think you'll want to go to the beach?" stuff. Which turned out to be a more honest and in the end more relatable and likeable reaction than the performative grief and faux-sincerity of a complete stranger.

The ending was magnificent (whether they make it or they don't is beside the point, but the metaphor is spoiled if they die). I think the series as a whole suffered from giving too much separate screen time to their considerably less funny or likeable friends.

Yeah, the supporting characters were generally well played but completely underwritten. Feargal the best of the bunch, but even him they kind of set up as this abrasive eccentric and then the wrting didn't really carry that through.

It felt like they originally intended it to be a much longer-running programme, but real life truncated everything. Extremely satisfying ending though.

I watched this on All4 and as soon as the credits started rolling the screen goes to like 1/4 size into the left hand corner of the screen with "you may also like" type links all over the rest of the screen so I couldn't even make out what was happening during the credits. Am I right in thinking that they are swimming back towards the shore but may not make it?

They’re swimming back to shore, but are extremely far out for no apparent reason - both have been swimming and paddling normally, not caught in a rip.

I'm not sure how I feel about that! I did like the episode and will genuinely miss the show and those two characters. Sharon is one stunning lady.

Share your annoyance at All4 shrinking the final moments, jed. Of course, stabbing around to try to find the button that expanded it again and instead quit the whole thing. Modern TV is rubbish.

They’re swimming back to shore, but are extremely far out for no apparent reason - both have been swimming and paddling normally, not caught in a rip.

I thought they were in a rip, simply because they were far out for no apparent reason and appeared to be making no headway back to the shore.

"The Canterbury Tales were written by the Shakespeare of bum jokes, Geoffrey Chaucer"

Cunk's return tonight was triumphant.