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

no goodness will come from it

I saw this guy Alex Love in Edinburgh and without damning him too much he was ok, engaging, a few good laughs but not quite the finished article. He has blog which is essential reading but is pretty grim in places, any lingering ideas I had that it's something I might want to try were put to bed after reading his experiences at the Fringe http://www.alexlove.co.uk (start from entry 338 and work forward).

http://chortle.co.uk/news/2011/09/06/13929/fast_show_to_return

Old favourites for Foster's. Even Caroline Aherne's involved.

I thought that new Channel 4 comedy, "Fresh Meat" (from Peep Show writers), was pretty funny. I ordinarily can't stand Jack Whitehall, but I laughed at a bunch of his gags. Inbetweeners guy exact same as on Inbetweeners. Scottish guy as token scumbag roommate was amusing. Anybody else see it?

Yeah, I agree with pretty much everything you say there

Me too. I never thought I'd ever laugh at anything Jack Whitehall said or did, but he was v funny in this.

jack whitehall forever disgusting but at least he isn't doing his own shite stuff

scottish guy funny didn't think the character that funny but I like the guy I liked it when he said YUM YUM YUM

this was a bit bad but not terrible

It's somewhere in the middle of Inbetweeners, Peep Show and Spaced, though not as sharp - or as funny - as any of them. But for now it's watchable. They need to give that third girl character something to do, the one who is Single White Female-ing the brassy girl. Her one-note-ness is particularly grating.

Brassy girl is wearying

always seen whitehead as the hipster michael macintyre

errr whitehall rather

Third girl looks and sounds uncannily like Jessica Hynes, which doesn't help with the Spaced comparisons. I think this is really poor tbh. The Robert Webb cameo was a particular lowlight

I've avoided anything with him in it but, on the evidence of this, he's quite a good comic actor (xp) Robert Webb cameo was embarrassing

whitehall as hipster michael macintyre OTM

hipster is the wrong word

interesting watching a bit of fresh meat.. it's a bit like whitehall is more his "real self" in this, and his standup persona a kind of uncomfortable half-sham

yeah you're right, not hipster, just "young" i guess

anyway enough about him, i like the tough girl listening to "kick out the jams"

this was really hard to watch and had no reason to be 55 minutes long

I smirked a few times in the final third but if I'd had absolutely anything else to do/go to last night I'd've been out of there by that point

had heard this was 'dark' which I can only assume gets taken to mean 'people constanctly acting like utter pricks to each other' these days

double the length of an ep = no pressure to be funny you can call it a comedy-drama plus extra mobile phone advertising revenue

altho of course what you end up with is some fucking children's porridge that's neither funny nor dramatic

I've only seen the second half of each episode, so not sure how it would hold up over 55 minutes, seems a daft thing to do to me

channel 4 in "desperate to fill prime time with anything aimed at 14-24 year olds" shocker

Third girl looks and sounds uncannily like Jessica Hynes, which doesn't help with the Spaced comparisons

Yes, we noticed this straight off.

Robert Webb character completely terrible, yes. Simon Inbetweener's character completely under-defined and rather pointless, might as well not actually be there. Whitehall and the Scottish guy definitely best things in it.

Good analysis. Webb's cameo was a horribly botched opportunity. I like it overall though - Whitehall's dialogue is consistently brilliant.

gary: tank commander

couldn't work out if the Scottish dude was supposed to be one of those people who are constantly delivering deadpan 'pithy' one-liners that don't really work, or if his lines were just not very well written

It's basically TOO stereotyped to ring in any way true. Weird guy, annoying guy, dull guy, trying-too-hard girl, dull girl, "outrageous" girl. Dull girl probably isn't meant to be that dull, but she just is, despite the shagging behind her boyfriend's back and that.

Scottish guy's one-liners mostly work afaic, so lack of characterisation for him and Whitehall gets a bye from me since they actually deliver on the comedy front.

I still like this. I still think about Whitehall's line "there is a lot of high quality anus in here" in the pub in Episode 1 and laugh.
Lots of laziness in the characters and dynamics (cutesy romantic tension, scumbag extra roommate, posho who wants to be street, class shame girl, etc. etc. etc.), but I still find it all pretty charming. And I actually was pretty moved by Inbetweeners-guy's poem thing and Howard eating the chocolates in last night's ep. I'm pretty much putty in your hands if you bust out the intro to "I Wanna Be Adored" to set a mood. So, yeah.

you are obviously the target anus I mean audience hee hee but I said anus

I suspect I'm way older. But I did laugh at "anus" again.

Anyone watch "Holy Flying Cirus" then? Seems like it's been fairly divisive, and it was uneven, but i liked it on the whole. The Rufus Jones as Terry Jones as Michael Palin's wife bits were great

just watched the first couple of minutes and i've got to say this looks great.

I really liked it overall. Some parts were a bit irritating like the prominence given to the tourettes syndrome and stuttering actors - but I think the style was an interesting way to cover the Life of Brian Story.

I suspect Eric Idle didn't like it.

The episode of Friday Night Saturday Morning with the debate, that BBC4 showed after, was the thing though. Fascinating piece of television.

Holy Flying Circus was okay, but seriously mared by some shitty choices - the silly Christian pressure group, the OTT producer and so on. But most of the 'impressions' were fine - particularly those of Malcolm Muggeridge and Michael Palin.

re: FM, i find whitehall surprisingly hilarious, but the whole thing just seems too pointlessly padded out. it should be half an hour, not nearly an hour. i confess i watch it mainly for the welsh girl, but its had some good moments, its just not as tight as it could be. surprised its gotten such good writeups from critics too, not saying it isnt good, but its not THAT good. its like theyre willing it on just cos the peepshow guys wrote it.

I completely agree with that titchy, apart from the Jack Whitehall bit, I find his character very predictable (in fact all the characters are pretty two dimensional) but it doesent have enough decent material to be nearly an hour long, and although it makes you snigger, its not laugh out loud funny. Not sure why critics are so pleased with it, it just seems really obviously flawed.

I've gone from being disappointed with it to liking it quite a lot. There are some great lines in there and it does have heart. I feel a bit old for it though, like it's a comedy primer for students. I'm watching it with no ads so it's only ~10 mins longer than a regular 30-min slot.

Life's Too Short was all right until it suddenly became all about Ricky Gervais for no reason.

Warwick Davis was p much channelling Gervais the whole way through - effectively, but it was still a bit weird.

It really was. The show seems to be just another humility vehicle.

New Fast Show. It's pretty bad though :(
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=JKdLZ9P9RdQ

i thought that was alright. nothing much new in it, just more of the same, but then i think that's the point of these things (familiarity). was pleasantly surprised that pretty much all the old cast members were there.

yeah, must have been hard to persuade Mark Williams to spare the time

Last night's Life's Too Short (with J Depp) quite staggeringly awful. The whole thing seems set up to flatter Gervais.

It's mind-boggling isn't it? Course he's being "ironic"

Lost 40% of its audience this week, according to Chortle. Not surprising. Gervais doesn't know when to keep his mug out.

Look Around You writer chaps Robert Popper and Peter Serafinowicz made this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lz-l5HiJ3NY

New comedy series last night.

Actually, wasn't too bad, kinda mainstream mostly.

Watching the first ep of "Life's too short". Really unimpressed but did think the liam neeson failed improv bit was pretty well done, although it felt pretty familiar.