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

(it's mostly bill bailey tbh, i think he must be missing touring)

bbc iii are showing the US version of Ghosts from sunday

It's pretty good on the whole, a fair number of eps are just Brit episodes redone or plot we've already seen but in some cases they manage to do it better imo (e.g. the cult plot from S4E2 UK becomes the centre of an episode and is much improved for it).

Last x podcast you are going to avoid - Rob Beckett and Josh Widdicombe's Parenting Hell

Kiell Smith-Bynoe my instant favourite of the new Taskmaster lineup. Jenny Eclair other end of the scale.

Jenny Eclair has truly disgraced herself on Twitter recently.

Her entire career is a disgrace

"John Kearns gives good Taskmaster, yes. It's a very winning combination from a viewer's viewpoint this year."

Fully agree on this - has been a really, really fun series. I've even massively warmed to Dara.

spoilered myself by watching start of horne section before watching taskmaster so now i know who won...

kinda surprised frankie boyle is going to be on

think the horne section is annoying me slightly by having people playing themselves and other career-adjacent people playing fictional people. the same appears to be true of Dave's new Live At The Moth Club, which is aditionally strange by being set in a place i know from indie gigs.

US Ghosts may be surpassing UK Ghosts, not least because they are already at 18 episodes. the actor who plays the native american (and probably died in 1800s?) always seems too modern for me. and the headless guy, who always felt like a one-note joke in the uk version, seems to have disappeared.

Far fewer beheadings in US history I guess.

I never fully warmed to Dara or Sarah, but loved the other three by the end.

I can't stand Jenny Eclair. I saw her live about 30 years ago and she was shit and has done nothing to change my mind in the intervening decades.

To go along with the new xmas episode of motherland, i decided to grab a bunch of UK comedies i was unfamiliar with. Opinions on the following? Best to avoid, best to jump in immediately?

Pure
Alma's Not Normal
Raised By Wolves
Scarborough
White Gold
Cuckoo
Josh
Rev.
Uncle
Witless

I liked Alma’s Not Normal a lot.

Pure was interesting but uncomfortable watching, and I’m not sure I recognised it was a comedy when I watched it. This was right at the start of UK lockdown - so my sense of humour may have gone temporarily mia.

Rev. Is terrific, never seen any of the other ps.

Quite enjoyed Pure but it felt like it was interchangeable with a few other series e.g. Feel Good.

Never watched Alma's Not Normal, Scarborough or Uncle

Raised By Wolves was fine but 50% of the jokes were nostalgia and that film with Beany Feldstein suggests CM is not exactly a reliable narrator. Cast are v good

White Gold is fine but 90% of the jokes are nostalgia.

Cuckoo is a weird one. The two leads change actors after season 1 - one of which is a contrived new character which leads to a season+ long joke that never pays off well - and the final season is a buddy comedy that the male lead isn't even in. But bits of it made me laugh and it's a solid britcom the ensemble cast.

Rev is great and the only thing on the list I would consider rewatching. Tom Hollander is brilliant but then he generally always is.

Josh is rank. Utterly dreadful.
In other nepotism news (matching Beattie Edmondson in Josh, who should never be allowed to perform again between that and the Wright Way) Witless is sort of charmless and not worth the time investment.

Loath as I am to dunk on comedians' sisters, that woman in Witless is extremely annoying. The week she was on House of Games, we couldn't watch it after the first episode.

cousin visiting from nz so they are watching Only Fools marathon in the wrong aspect ratio

detectorists didn't disappoint, thankfully.

the nod to Becky's mum dying was nice. the throwback to the lemonade. the TR7.

I struggled with Detectorists a bit tbh.

I didn't buy Toby Jones's motive. The burnt-down cottage was a weird jolt. And that ending? Eh.

After Glass Onion and the popularity of cosy murder mysteries these days, I really enjoy something that has conflict and drama rooted in small things that do not involve killing people. Even though it seems on the surface like Lance and Andy have both lost a lot at the start of the episode, Andy still has his family, but Lance has lost even that connection, even though it may not be permanent. I totally bought his desire to have something that nobody could take away from him, at least for a little while.
I particularly love Lance's disdain for archaeologists. And the way he sings "It's Raining Men".

I hadn't really thought about it like that. I like that reading. I guess with my historical understanding of the characters, it felt like an engineered conflict - the resolution of which did little to suggest it was anything much beyond 'will this do?'. (I like that their relationship is super low-key but...) Co-sign the way he sings 'It's Raining Men'.

remember a long time ago when i got seriously addicted to QI on youtube? well that's still sort of happening, grimly. and i watch some only connect but those get removed unpredictably

but nowww there's a YT account called Mundo that has uploaded seemingly the entirety of Richard Osman's House of Games and man this show rules! great questions, people are pleasant enough, very comfy

holy crap it’s goole! hi!

hello tracer :)

several consecutive hours of Richard Osman quizzes got me posting

hey whatever it takes

It's a very good show, but sometimes they have a weak lineup and it can be a bit like pulling teeth. And some of the rounds are rubbish, like the Internet passwords round (which we always fast-forward through because it's just guessing numbers and they never get them right).

Best rounds on House of Games are the one where they pause a song intro and you've got to buzz in where you think the lyrics start, and the one where they have to place something on a map. I would happily watch a half hour show consisting of just the latter.

Yeah those are some of the best rounds, I really like the round where they made picture clues of song lyrics, but I think they've retired that round because I don't remember seeing it in a while.

I like the I'm Terrible at Dating round and the Distinctly Average round, just because it's fun trying to make informed guesses based off your own personal anchor points.

Distinctly Average is great. I always use The Chase guessing tactic, go as high as plausible because why else would they ask the question, and it works most of the time.

Why do British comedy panel shows have to have such distractingly horrible garish illuminated sets?

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/pv-target-images/540090bf9cb9c46e007866cff069cbd08a0c846d678a6e969b5aca1f2cd8abc7._SX1080_.jpg

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BODJiZDY2YmEtOGY3NC00YzI4LTkyZmQtM2VmNmVlYTEzZWNlXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyNjYyNDMwOQ@@._V1_.jpg

A good question!

I'd be screaming "get me out of this fucking nightmare" within 2 minutes. Yes, and the garish set is quite triggering as well. If they turned off the lighting it could like that movie, Circle. In which the panel guests are all prisoners of a mystery AI tesla ball in the middle of the set and it executes them all one at a time!

id watch that show (even if i couldnt see much)

it's quite a fun movie, but unfortunately no UK comedians get electrocuted in it.

I wonder if it's so that someone who switches the programme on in the middle can recognize it immediately as a comedy panel show and not a proper quiz or a news programme? It'd be interesting to compare the design, maybe.

QI design is less garish, possibly to highlight that it is Edutainment?

Oh yeah, that would make sense.

Whereas the others are neither educational or entertaining.

I enjoy Would I Lie to You in an it's Friday night and I'm on my third beer kind of way.

It's good, especially if Bob Mortimer is on. But I avoided it for a while exactly because of the garish set.

i love WILTY especially for bob mortimer and greg davies, but yeah the sets are an abomination

Munya was v good on WILTY last week I thought

Agreed - good chemistry with David.

Just popping in to say "Fuck Alfie Brown"

The Jewish woman who called him out for doing a lazy & insulting "left wing are antisemites" routine in 2023 has been bullied into deleting her account, but you can get an idea of it from him.

To those who’ve asked.

I was doing a work in progress of my new show Red Flags Galore! and made a joke, it’s not in the show, I was off on some tangent.

“I’m what’s often described by some on the left as a ‘centrist’, which means I’m also left wing but I don’t hate Jews”

— 🇺🇦 alfie brown (@abcomedian) March 21, 2023

oh good a comedian who is Very Left Wing, Actually but also hates Corbyn, how refreshing

Never heard of him but amused to find out his dad is Glen Ponder.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9ykKrqZtgQ

2. I didn’t feel comfortable explaining to a Jewish woman that she was wrong on antisemitism, even if I believed that to be the case. I also said, just because she was Jewish didn’t make her necessarily right,

— 🇺🇦 alfie brown (@abcomedian) March 21, 2023

this is A+ weaselling though, apparently he does feel comfortable *telling* a Jewish woman that she's wrong on antisemitism, because that's what he was doing, but he doesn't feel comfortable 'explaining' to her why she's wrong on antisemitism

"I'm too respectful to lecture you on why you're wrong, but if you don't know you're wrong you must be a fucking idiot" - but somehow worse than that.