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

ya tbf i'm here discussing comedy when i should be writing, maybe when that bald cunt from mock the week should be thinking up funny things he's instead writing about structuralism.

DL otm, and i also don't get why pilkington is in this at all. he plays pilkington (because he's not an actor), so you're never seeing dougie at all, you're only ever seeing pilkington.

the line of pathos that burns through this show is p clearly an excuse for gervais to say 'hey see, i am sympathetic toward mongs after all'. i don't get why he has to play the bloke with learning difficulties (beyond narcissism obv).

btw now we know how this is structured as a whole series: some people from head office the government have visited to close down the slough branch the care centre due to cutbacks cutbacks, and the office the heartwarming ending writes itself.

gervais is a classic dostoevskian buffoon, making a proud capering display of his expertise on his own dickishness, repellent to all.

another five years of this and he will very literally disappear up his own arse. meanwhile I'm keen to see what stephen merchant (who was not involved in 'derek') produces for hbo in america. I'm starting to suspect he's the ego restraint that gervais desperately needs.

jimmy carr is slightly different than the other comedians mentioned perhaps — i've found him funny on supporting appearances on shows like qi, and he obviously has a quick wit. i find the role he plays in planned stuff, stand-up or various hosting gigs, to be very obnoxious. there he seems a detached, bigoted, and utterly unlikeable person, which i don't believe he is in everyday life even with all the personal scandals. boyle has a similar persona but is somewhat funnier with it imo

Stephen Merchant, currently seen in MOVIE 43: this is guaranteed to be hot garbage, right

I've seen Jimmy Carr and David O'Doherty do an odd double act where Jimmy Carr just reads out one-liners and DOD vamps on his keyboard. I didn't hate it (though it's always been very mid-bill).

Actually, what was Life's Too Short like?

Also from IMDB, ooof:

Hello Ladies (2013– )
TV Series - Comedy
Your rating: -/10 (awaiting 5 votes)
Reviews: write review
A gawky Englishman comes to Los Angeles to find the woman of his dreams.

Oh, he was talking about that on Graham Norton last week. It's the premise of his stand-up tour, turned into a sitcom. In my head, it's a direct successor to Jim Carrey's version of Danny Wallace in Yes Man.

Actually, what was Life's Too Short like?

not sure tbh. the first episode had warwick davis playing david brent lite for the first half, and the second half was a completely out-of-place comedy sketch feat. ricky gervais and liam neeson. i don't even remember whether davis was in that entire scene. after that i gave up and wrote off the whole thing as another gervais vanity project (as did most of britain iirc).

Yeah I have in my head that there's a direct line from Life's Too Short to Derek (er, not that I've seen either of them), but Merchant was definitely on board with Life's Too Short, is why I was asking.

yeah, that surprised me too. perhaps that was his breaking point.

(he wasn't involved in the final idiot abroad series either iirc)

Ricky Gervais is such a blight these days.

I think Boyle is 100% persona. Reading him Tweet back and forth with other comics (some unlikely - he seems to be pretty tight with, like, Robin Ince) you get such a different sense of that guy.

gervais comes off well here (doesn't necessarily prove anything tho - most comics do given the opportunity to explain their behaviour in print - see also boyle)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2013/feb/02/ricky-gervais-interview-derek-comedy

Life's too short had brief moments of greatness but otherwise was either dull Brent rehashed or unlikely "excruciating" moments rehashed (e.g. Crap wedding speech that wouldn't have made it into the first draft of The Office). Also the Gervaise and Merchant or celeb bits were just bizarrely crowbarred in.

One episode of Life's Too Short had a grotesque scene in which Gervais accidentally offends Steve Carell over Skype, thus blowing any chance of him returning to the US Office, and complains about how much money he's just lost as a result, thus indicating that he has already made a far greater sum from The Office. Multi-millionaire loses chance to earn even more millions with a single Skype call - this is not a winning comedic premise. It was such a bizarre misjudgement to cast Warwick Davis as an early-Gervais-style no-hoper while Gervais himself plays a smug mogul, surrounded by framed posters of his movies and courted by celebrities, and gives himself a much easier ride than he gave, say, Ben Stiller in Extras. If ever somebody has become what he once despised.

Liam Neeson's bit was good though.

Liam Neeson's bit was amazing, one of the funniest things I've ever seen. The rest was generally somewhere between crap and mediocre.

One episode of Life's Too Short had a grotesque scene in which Gervais accidentally offends Steve Carell over Skype, thus blowing any chance of him returning to the US Office, and complains about how much money he's just lost as a result, thus indicating that he has already made a far greater sum from The Office. Multi-millionaire loses chance to earn even more millions with a single Skype call - this is not a winning comedic premise.

this, in a show about warwick davis

so...the prospect of new David Brent stuff for Comic Relief then...

is the brent stuff worth watching?

shame how poor the kevin eldon sketch show is. not hugely surprising though, v late in the game to be busting out a sketch show. if he had it in him he'd have done it long long ago.

in happier news, anna & katy, while not perfect, has some great moments (congratulations, the countdown thing before they milk it too much).

do wonder how the critics will respond to It's Kevin as he's the ultimate broadhseet comedy goldenboy. twitter seems divided between hate/love, but then again the same can be said for derek and that's probably the worst thing ever ever ever

gervais is over

nope, Derek got recommissioned

no i mean gervais is over

he will keep doing stuff but most people seem well sick of him

except that he is still hugely popular

tragically

the story of gervais decrees that he will suffer a massive massive fall from grace at some point soon. i don't mean artistically, he's done and dusted that, but some huge personal meltdown - his persona on twitter is so weird, the whole arrogant atheist thing is tiresome enough but the relentless retweeting of praise shows signs of someone who doesn't really know what he is anymore. i've been listening to the (very good) xfm shows from 2003 and there's no way that RG would behave like the one we have now

oh and merchant is kindof a dick in them. barely ever funny and often lets some v unpleasant thoughts slip out, about women, the poor, etc. i think his role in the brilliance of the office is overstated, esp after the next-level shite that was his standup show of the other year

he was good as the voice of portal 2, mind. not sure how much input he had into the writing of that

but yeah gervais is living out some kind of greek tragedy, he's had his artistic downfall and i'm convinced he has a bigger one to come. if he doesn't then... guh, cunts really do run the world

also, in defence of 'mong': a symphony in 26 parts

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zEqfle758M

but enough gervais analysis, what about kevin eldon?!

It's Kevin didn't make me howl with laughter, this vehicle would have been great for Eldon 10 years ago, and possibly the writing would have been better. He had a few show biz mates in the first episode, shame they couldn't sit down for a few hours and come up with some comedy genius. I wanted this to be awesome but it feels very forced.

What kind of form is Eddie Izzard on these days? He's doing a massive tour of mainland Europe next month which really surprised me. I would never have thought that an English-speaking comic, even a top-drawer one like Izzard, could be so popular in non-English-speaking countries.

He speaks French fluently, doesn't he? I'm sure I remember watching one of his standup shows on C4 and half of it was in French.

Yes, I think at one point he attempted to do an entire gig in French, only occasionally slipping into English to ask how to say something in French. He speaks German too.

amazed he doesn't brag about it

He does. And he did a whole residency in French.

Force Majeure World Tour
Force majeure (French, “superior force", "chance occurrence, unavoidable accident")
In 2011 EDDIE IZZARD, the man who turned talking ‘Bollocks’ into an art form performed and sold–out Madison Square Garden in New York. He spent a three-month residency at the Théâtre de Dix Heures in Paris performing STRIPPED: ‘Tout en Francais’ (in French!) and then became the first stand-up to play a solo show at Los Angeles’ legendary Hollywood Bowl. It was an extraordinary year from an extraordinary man.

Last line pretty much sums it up. From his OWN website!

He speaks German too

fuck, really? I just got tickets to see him in Vienna. Wasn't expecting him to do the show in German.

Jesus. Couldn't make it through six minutes of It's Kevin.

Watching it right now, it's awful. Shoulder millionaires raised a smile but ugh

cookd & bombd is 95% disappointment too but twitter is full of people who love it, properly baffled. not just his all-star mates either.

is it a case of comedy nerds expecting the earth and humbugging anything less? or that twitter gives an unduly loud voice to people with low low low thresholds for 'funny' (cf. derek)? or that the sketch show as a comedy vehicle is dead in the water?

even so, the average quality of the sketches on anna & katy were much higher than this. few mild 'hehs' but not much more. does seem like he tried and failed to make it limmylike, with the bridging scenes and little weird outbursts.

oh and in an interview recently KE described the music of 1976 as 'terrible' and used the term 'plastic disco' as a reason. so he can pretty much fuck off. (shades of that quote in stewart lee's book about philip glass being vastly superior to any chartpop, which kinda nails everything iffy about the big guy.)

So you're saying I should avoid picking up Lee's recompiled Now albums from the merch stand next time?

It's Kevin is more or less unwatchable, although Shoulder Millionaires was almost funny. (on a side note, the commentary tracks he did for a couple of episodes on the FoF Series 1 dvd set are so deranged I can't decide whether they're any god or not.)

As for Gervais on Comic Relief, it basically undid any redemption Brent got in the 'final' Christmas special and reverted him to the worst he ever was. It just felt completely devoid of ideas, and the fact it centred around a throwaway joke in one episode only heightened that.

Undoubtedly the weirdest part of Comic Relief was James Corden's bit in character as the guy he plays in Gavin & Stacey, which was a rant about how normal people haven't got any money because there's a recession on and after 20 years didn't comedians think normal people were getting sick of perpetually being asked to put their hands in their pockets by millionaires who seemed to think their time (and resultant exposure) was somehow equivalent to cash. Especially Theo Paphitis.

andrew, yes. that's precisely what i'm saying.