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

this country is back !!!

speaking of low-key BBC sitcoms, mum seems pretty funny a couple of episodes in. has the conventional charm of something like him & her

I quite enjoyed the first series of Mum but the two eps of this so far seem unlikeable for a reason I can't put my finger on.

Great to see This Country back although the changed dynamics this series need to pan out.

I like the Diane Morgan/Joe Wilkinson thing but it's not really treading new ground.

"...unlikeable for a reason I can't put my finger on."

It's the same writer as Him & Her, which was gross in an incredibly mean and unbelievable way.

the problem i have with 'Mum' is the son and his girlfriend.
i find them just too slap worthy, and so really get on my nerves(i know thats the point, but still..)
the snooty friend though has some brutal lines.

https://www.comedy.co.uk/images/library/comedies/other/beano_comedians_cover.jpg

(this is mainly just to enrage calzino i think)

Cunk on Britain is dense. I'm sure I've missed half the jokes.

Final episode of This Country even better than last series' final episode. Better even than Detectorists. There, I said it.

I'd begun to hate Mum by the end, the characters were all so unlikeable I found myself wishing little miseries on them (like hoping the son was going to forget to pay the deposit on the flat so they'd miss out).

Two Doors Down was glorious to the end. This series of Still Game has been pretty good.

I could take or leave Young Offenders to be honest, I just ended up wishing it was funnier. The last episode with the bus hijack was probably the highlight.

Two kind of underrated shows that the are either very short or still going in as far as anything does these days on BBC3. Soft Border Patrol is pretty predictable but v amusing, and Wannabe is very predictable but nearly amusing. I watched some other BBC3 series dumped on iplayer too, but it must have been unmemorable because I can't even recall the name of it.

I suspect that the lukewarmness of aldo's Wannabe recommendation is funnier than the show itself.

conversely, didn't last ten minutes of two doors down but thought this series of mum was great. agree, this country was great too.

First of the four James Acaster specials that dropped on netflix takes a while to get going but pretty great/moving by the end.

I really liked them, I thought the second was the weakest but it's very strong overall. I think he's great.

I especially loved his Pythagoras bit "every triangle is a love triangle if you love triangles".

He's definitley one of the best around.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b09yj4rc/limmys-homemade-show

cunk on britain was excellent

it should be better than it is imo

The story of life.

don't get me wrong she is a treasure, but it's because of that that i feel she's a bit underserved by the material. the jokes land with slightly too much regularity:

slightly off statement
- earnest supporting detail 1
- earnest supporting detail 2
-- bathetic/surreal/filthy conclusion

and the squirm-tastic ali g treatment of the experts felt mean-spirited. do we really need to take patient nerdy historians down a peg? when the daily show would blindside people with their ridiculous questions it usually served to highlight the stupidity of the correspondent him or herself, or the inanity of the format. when the writing does this the show is glorious. the whole opening 5 or 10 minutes is a masterclass in format satire

Hate it when they try and make a fool of somebody for no reason. Seen that shit on Samantha Bee.

the stretch leading up to the romans was amazing, thought this was much better than the other cunk stuff, faster & thicker

At least half those people would've known the setup, surely.

The Peston question was solid gold. and then the follow up...

Does Brooker have a hand on this?

yes, not sure the extent though

He's a writer on it, probably producer too?

I don't think the segments with historians are mean-spirited: the dynamic of them seems to be that Cunk is a petulant child and they are almost absurdly patient, kindly people, they always come off very well. You could argue that they shouldn't have to waste their time with this nonsense in the first place sure but I mean that's what you get when you don't look into ppl who want to interview you.

I got the impression they were probably in on it, I mean, this isn't the 90s

Diane Morgan (on Adam Buxton's podcast) says no, fwiw.

you'd need exttremely good actors to pull that off.

Not really, all you'd have to do is look mildly bemused, exasperated at worst

I loved Robert Preston trying really hard to think about what "the most political thing that's ever happened" was, looked like he genuinely thought he could come up with an answer.

Peston, he's not a Preston or he would've been in the poll

I loved Robert Preston trying really hard to think about what "the most political thing that's ever happened" was

Brexit, duh.

Dude she interviewed about Nelson this week was the first expert to seem genuinley angry about the experience.

Ladies and Gentlemen, A CONTENDER APPROACHES.

Rob Beckett's Playing For Time is (caveated by the fact I've only watched the first episode so far) genuinely the worst 'comedy' ever commissioned by C4 at least, and maybe anyone.

It's clearly trying to exploit the success on Dave of Go 8 Bit, various "I like August 1983" talking heads shows and, to a lesser extent, Taskmaster and Rob's success on that. But fails at every step of the way.

It starts with an "acted" set-up sequence. Rob, bless him, is quite an engaging character but it not an actor in any way, shape or form. He makes Josh Widdecombe look like Marlon Brando. I would say "eyes and teeth" but thats a cheap gag (although probably not above being the best joke made on this show). And the premise is laid out - a woman (her off Derek) has come back from the future and given him a video game console which will trap him in the past unless he can complete video game challenges from those eras.

What happens next is nearly inexplicable. Rob is transported into a front room/man cave dressed as a parody of the era where he looks at the stuff "oh look, that's a vinyl. I'm learning." and the future woman tells us what was in the news at the time. It's exactly like a children's tv show and filmed as one but edgy with swearing and that, innit. The featured eras are the 80s, the 90s and the present day. But where are the Naughties, I hear you cry? Well they actually ask the same question in the show which is dealt with by "I knew you'd forget that we played games in that era, so here's a flashback montage of what we played" <cut to 3 10 second clips>. I think, giving to the benefit of the doubt, it's supposed to actually be a chat show with the guests, but without much chat.

Episode one features Scarlett Moffatt, who cannot play games at all. The writers clearly haven't played games either, because the 1982 game they pick is PacMan on the Atari 2600 which isn't exactly the easiest thing for people who can't play games. Even then, they only have to complete one level between them which they fail at so they have to do the backup task instead. I can scarcely believe I am typing this but SCARLETT HAS TO THROW CHEESE PUFFS (because they're Pac Dots, DO YOU SEE) INTO ROB'S MOUTH ACROSS A TABLE. The fucking state of entertainment. THIS IS 2018 FFS.

Episode 2 is Asim Chaudry and only marginally better. God help us, episode three has Josh Widdecombe. I feel like I can't look away.

In better news, I enjoyed Lee and Dean quite a lot. It's not at all what you might think it is.

Oh, wait, Future Woman on Rob Beckett is called Peggy which I have only just realised is supposed to be a joke.

jesus

Ep 3: hold my beer.

The 80s is represented by Rob dressed as MC Hammer and Josh as Darryl McDaniels. Could only have been worse with blackface which sadly is not in evidence. Rob looks like a drunk Auntie wearing a baseball hat backwards in a YouTube clip.

that Rob Beckett thing sounds like what all comedy panel shows look like to me

I never learned from any comedy panel show that Pavement were a famous band from the 70s (ep 3).

I saw the last 15 minutes of the Josh Widdecombe episode of that Rob Beckett show and while it wasn't great it was about a million times better than Go 8 Bit which just doesn't work at all as a format imo.

It's exactly like a children's tv show and filmed as one but edgy with swearing and that, innit.

like, retro children's tv show is a much better format for a show where comedians play computer games than Go 8 Bit's half a dozen ppl riffing in front of an audience panel show thing, lack of studio audience means they can go for gently amusing chat rather than a zingerthon. Watching other people play video games is inherently quite dull but the Rob Beckett thing kind of makes a virtue of it by being relaxing (related to this - the other virtue of only having two ppl appear is that you can actually sort of follow the game as opposed to Go 8 Bit's 'four ppl play the same one player game on four different screens while two other ppl commentate and everything is incomprehensible' approach

cunt referee just stood 5 yards in front of a clothesline on Costa and didn't even blow for a foul

lol wrong thread

xpost

Just to be clear, you watched Rob and Josh wearing bow ties and frame-only glasses (representing 2009, "the year of geek chic") make jokes about how they weren't gay while playing a wii canoeing game ("the wii was the first console that did the physical thing, which was why it didn't take off"); then do a backup task featuring Rob trying to talk with a grill in ("no, not with sausages, with jewels like what rappers wore") complete with gang signs and pass on well known 2009 phrases like "bling-bling" only "wasn't great".

I'm no Go 8 Bit stan, and God knows it crashes and burns when the guests are dreadful like Natasia Demetriu the other week, but at least it actually seems to care about video games.

I wasn't aware of either of these comedians or their true crime podcast but this was fun
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUsFsPje6BA

Go 8 Bit is appaling but I can believe that Beckett thing's worse.

cunt referee just stood 5 yards in front of a clothesline on Costa and didn't even blow for a foul

Strangely appropriate post for a UK comedy thread.

ikr?

new Taskmaster on wednesday

with
Alice Levine
Asim Chaudhry
Liza Tarbuck
Russell Howard
Tim Vine

JON RICHARDSON: ULTIMATE WORRIER, on Dave after taskmaster, is a good title in search of a format.

and also in search of a good host, one must assume

324th time I rush to defend him then realise I'm confusing him with Joe Wilkinson