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

ill behaviour is such shite upon further review

Dave's advertising a new series of taskmaster. Appears to include Aisling B, B Mortimer, M Watson, the bloke from mash TV and another woman!

(Nish Kumar, Sally Phillips. 12th sept)

They announced that lot at the end of the last series. I love Taskmaster so I'll just rein in my disappointment that we haven't had a new series of Modern Life is Goodish inbetween the last series and this forthcoming one.

Not Peep Show very much like Peep Show shocker.

Good like Peep Show?

Good like Bad Peep Show.

I laughed at bits (many of which were either telegraphed or Peep Show jokes), but pretty much all the cast are full-on comedy stereotypes and Mark & Jez are basically Mark & Jez.

I suspected as much, I will still probably watch it.

wtf @ that Ben Elton thing with David Mitchell as Shakespeare

I absently watched that last night. It... wasn't as bad as I expected. Mark Heap was having fun at least. I didn't actually laugh though.

On its second series, at least.

Yeah, series 2. Several of my friends love it. The involvement of Ben Elton makes me very wary indeed.

I like it. I'm not proud of liking it, but I do.

it has a great cast. but the script has the stink of elton about it. the trailer was a bad example of this.

(the way he made it blindingly obvious, the parallels between then and brexit. leave it a bit vaguer, let the audience make the leap, don't treat us like idiots)

I had one laugh out loud in the ep, which was one more than the whole of S1.

Just found out Josie Long's night in Camden is no more :(

i went to the last one. it was scrappy (as usual), good kind of scrappy (robin ince reading poetry, john luc roberts naked...)

apparently her night didn't get enough of an audience (despite being full the last few times i've been) whereas chris coltraine's lolitics does...

it's back in the new year in a new venue (the old mucky pup in islington)

That's crazy, I was just saying to my partner "well if Josie doesn't draw enough of a crowd, I'm sure lolitics will be done for as well".

Good news in the end though, Islington's closer to where I live #old

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DJxwvs1U8AEESTR?format=jpg&name=large

I believe that's a US comedian.

whoops

after all that i did, of course, miss the first of the new task masters... (wednesdays on dave). luckily it's repeated tonight.

(M Watson also currently starving himself to near death on celebrity the island with bear grylls)

Just seen what Sean Lock looks like now! He's turning into Walter White.

That's weird, he's looked exactly the same for about 20 years.

another series of last leg? wasn't it only 2 minutes ago that the last series finished?

i watched 'pact' yesterday, starring her from him and her. was probably the most depressing thing i've seen in a while.

W1A is spot on about the meeting room names (floella benjamin, citizen khan) and the fold up bicycles.

I should really get with W1A at some point. It sort of seems like the kind of show that brings knowing nods rather than the lolz though. I didn't watch 2012 either.

Ben Elton was on the One Show tonight. I turned off after about two minutes. I suspect he was being a massive self-important bell-end though.

i watched 'pact' yesterday, starring her from him and her. was probably the most depressing thing i've seen in a while.

gave up after 10 mins. not one laugh.

new season of the detectorists can not come soon enough.

Oh, indeed. Was very late to Detectorists too, but I love it so much.

Sara Pascoe was on Richard Herring's show and I was laughing a lot at her saying she met Brian Blessed, but he might have been just an old Christmas tree constantly interrupting her.

Upstart Crow got progressively worse through S2 and featured an Elizabeth version of yer ACTUAL double seat routine near the end.

I might watch Upstart Crow if they got Miranda Richardson to reprise her QE1.

Detectorists is back on the 8th of November

looking forward to Motherland. I'm a bit in love with Diane Morgan.

Detectorists is back on the 8th of November

S3:Ep1 : Excellent.
loved the village hall scene, and the flashback was wonderfully done.

the 'bit of scaffolding' was classic detectorists, i think.

(they were on Front Row on tuesday night talking about the new series and apparently mackenzie has his detector on all the time whilst filming, toby doesn't)

elsewhere, Man Down continues to provide at least a LOL every episode. last week with the 'where's bob gone', 'he's got a part in the new Star Wars' bit and last night's Odessa Steps nod.

the 'bit of scaffolding' was classic detectorists, i think.

absolutely.

Man Down is very hit and miss for me, but when it hits, it really hits.

i have enjoyed 'Gameface' as well on ch4 recently, last episode tonight.

Man Down is a bit broad, yes. some good farcy bits, but i miss the drama lessons.

yes, and both greg and roisin were good guests on Last Leg last week.

matt lucas was on the radio a LOT recently talking about how he wouldn't do Little Britain again because times have changed and a lot of the things they did even that recently would be impossible now. all of which i was thinking about whilst watching League Of Gentlemen S01E01 repeat on bbc4 last night...

Oh I didn't kow Man Down was back, always good fun.

all of which i was thinking about whilst watching League Of Gentlemen S01E01 repeat on bbc4 last night...

Sadly Pemberton and Shearsmith have no such hindsight; listened to them on Adam Buxton's podcast and they were pretty missing-the-point defensive about this stuff.

Also revisited the first three episodes of Inside No.9 recently and they do a trans woman reveal which seems to be played entirely for shock value.

Would all be less complicated if I didn't like their stuff but I think that while there's some pretty bad elements in there a lot of what could be seen as Problematic is more complex/defensible than you'd think...which makes it doubly sad to learn they don't really think about that stuff at all.

I was told by someone who listened to that podcast that they were very considerate of those things and had always discussed it when writing.

lucas was on the radio a LOT recently talking about how he wouldn't do Little Britain again because times have changed and a lot of the things they did even that recently would be impossible now.

It was repugnant at the time, let's be clear

RAG, it's all about tone so ymmv but their response to concerns about Papa Lazarou was "race never even came into our mind", and (here's where the tone comes in) for me it felt like they thought that this was enough to put an end to the discussion.

Then when they were asked about Barbara they basically went "refer to the last question".

For Papa Lazarou I totally get that what they were going for was a kinda folk horror carnival feel and that blackface was part of that, would've been nice if they addressed things outside of just their intentions but it's an arguable point.

For Barbara it seems totally preposterous.

They did say at the end of that particular topic that yes, of course they discussed these matters, but to me there was nothing indicating that they had thought things through much.

They were otherwise very charming and funny, btw.

I hadn't considered the blackface aspect until recently, I never thought it was supposed to be that. Was it supposed to resemble blackface?

Yeah I just thought it was meant to be creepy.

I think it was supposed to resemble blackface, but Papa Lazarou is not a minstrel character. He's an unhinged conman using what he thinks are vague "exotic" tropes as part of his act. Like he himself is offensive, but I don't think the concept of the character is

iyknwim

It scanned as blackface to me at the time (meaning a direct reference to the cultural history of blackface, not that I thought the character was supposed to be black); again, I had assumed that this was to hit home Lazarou's character as belonging to a sort of half-forgotten England of tacky showbiz shit that now registers as creepy. So yeah, commentary on blackface; I believe they confirm that in the podcast when Buxton says he thought it was supposed to be a "minstrel thing.

What annoyed me about Pemberton and Shearmsith's reaction was how they confined it to their intention and gave no thought whatsoever about how it could come across differently once it's out in the world. Like I'm not saying they shouldn't have created the character.

Especially weak for them to then wave away Barbara with a "same applies" kinda answer: it's a shame because there were good things about Barbara, she was a reasonably sympathetic character and a trans woman in an era where there were next to none on TV, though obviously this is mitigated by the fact that she was inserted into this gallery of grotesques. So a convo on what they got right and what they got wrong could've been interesting.

In retrospect Hailey in Coronation street seems like a bigger deal.

Motherland is bloody great. Only thing I'm not sure about is the drippy token male primary carer. Feels like a bit of a cheap laugh (though he is very good in it).

I'm 2 eps in and I'm not sure how i feel about the main character either. She's sort of.. humourless and defensive and high-strung and generally awful? I started liking the "alpha mom", particularly once she got her comeuppance a couple of times. At least she appears to care about other people and have a sense of humour.