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

Ooh ta jed. xpost

This is also my least favourite series of Taskmaster so far.

I've been enjoying it, especially Lisa. But the PVR picked up the repeats of the winners specials during the week and that kind of eclipsed it.

Frankie Boyle still quite good but the funniest thing I've heard this week is ayoade's response to Katie price's "this looks like somewhere I could get married" on the crystal maze.

hey jed_ apparently one needs an "invite code"

i have a few invites. send me a message on here with your email address, if possible.

that goes for anyone here.

I enjoyed Flowers but not really sure what it was doing. Will discuss more if everyone has got to the end and we're doing spoilers.

i loved it. barely comedy, really tragic, esp last two episodes. brilliantly acted throughout, some characters v well written.

last episode was a strange(ly pleasant) change of pace

Definitely strange, but given the end of episode 5 it still felt really sad. The shape of it was very strange, and I think it worked.

I couldn't see where they were going to go in ep6 after Shun went off to shoot himself at the end of ep5. A flashback to happier times was probably all they could do.

The whole thing was a very well written look at mental illness, especially when Donald was probably the most ill of everyone but went unnoticed because he internalised it all. I suspected by the way they were leaning on Shun's drinking that it wouldn't end well for him.

I mean, from episode 1 people have been saying that it's not best judged as a comedy.

(of season 1)

The whole thing was a very well written look at mental illness

definitely this.

after calling it quits during ep4 due to it just going off the rails I decided to finish the series today.
very glad I did.
a wonderful way to end the story.

in other news :
I hope I am not alone in really enjoying bob mortimer and paul whitehouse talking crap while trying to catch some fish that's currently on bbc2/iplayer.
such a simple idea that so far works brilliantly.
easy summary : the detectorists vs fish.
involves a lot of discussions re mortality.

(oops, first part of post related to 'flowers')

Was The Trip on BBC? The Mortimer thing feels like a response to that.

(only better. I never really like the trip)

the bob Mortimer thing is as far as i can tell is proper improv.
and nowhere near as staged and a lot more natural.
i much prefer it to any of the trip.

and yes, 'the trip', was on the bbc for a while before it got nicked by £££.

watched a couple of episodes of Camping off the back of Dear Joan and Jericha and it's really not good, is it? it's like the worst bits of the worst Mike Leigh films turned up to 11 (and I like Mike Leigh mostly).

I was going to watch that - maybe I won't!

I saw an episode of Friday Night Dinner. I won't be watching another.

i liked individual bits of camping but it's so relentlessly bleak and awful that it's hard to take.

This Is America, anyone? it seems slightly superfluous but the one i watched this morning (episode 3) was quite ballsy, the mexican party...

Stewart Lee's Content Provider was on on bbc2 on saturday and was... long... but generally funny

I've been watching content provider in half hour chunks. He's cruising a bit now, but at a very high level.

Romesh Ranganathan is on TV a lot, isn't he?

He is. I really enjoyed his short series of travel to unpopular destinations. As a result I was looking forward to the Judge Romesh show but I barely made it to the end of the first episode of that, it came off too blokey for my taste.

recently i saw a show that didn’t have romesh in it, i think it was a documentary about whales

I've always quite liked him in stuff, but he's definitely over-exposed.

His hip hop podcast is good.

Watched half of the Greg Davis special in Netflix. It was alright. He's got that 'I'm finding this as funny as you are' schtick which i really like on panel shows but over a stand up show, quickly starts to look disingenuous.

I watched Romesh's guide to Haiti and found it incredibly frustrating. going around going 'wow this is so intense' but it was all really superficial. could've asked some basic questions of that guy's mum who was living in a tiny concrete hut but they were too busy with the kerazy rap antics

Tube advert reminds me that task master starts again this week. Wednesday at 9.

Acaster, Wong, Rhod, Jessica Knappett, Kerry Godliman.

They appear to have run out of women I know the names of. Actually, I recognise both of them now I've seen pictures.

First one wrote and starred in Grifters, second one was the female lead in Derek.

I have seen neither of those things. In fact, nothing on IMDb rings much of a bell, until you hit 'self' and it lists all the 8/10 cats and go 8 bit and mock the week appearances.

Isn't Jessica in that dreadful festival-based advert for something, tug of war with drag queens etc?

Yes, for tea I think? Or ice cream?

The other one was in the Rob Beckett video games thing I mentioned somewhere up there^.

There’s an episode of something with Luke McQueen showing on the TV in the A&E I’m in and I’m considering writing to someone.

The short Sara Pascoe thing on bbc2 the other night was snappy and full of ideas. Kind of a comedy lecture.

(She does regular stand up slots in London for a fiver a time, I should go to one. James Acaster's work-in-progress shows, by comparison, are £15 a pop)

Which reminds me, new Taskmaster. Nobody currently stands out. I wonder if they'll show the American version.

Was that the one about monogamy? I enjoyed that a lot, though felt a bit "well, actually..." and her using the example of Sartre and De Beauvoir.

Monogamy, yes. There was perhaps a bit too much dissing of the ex, a specific ex, which is nagl. There's an episode of Infinite Monkey Cage where she talks on a similar subject.

(next week's is by Nick Helm)

i think QI hit a nadir last night - jason manford and lee mack at the same time? aren't they basically the same person?

and the bit with the dolls, it was like #metoo never happened.

Toksvig revealed recently that she gets 40% the salary that Stephe Fry did.

mack is sour and chippy, but at least quick-witted; manford is a moon-faced oaf who has made a career out of this facial expression

I loved Camping but now there's a US version?

cha-chingg! good for Julia Davis.

Been watching a couple of shows on a whim after watching noting for years.

Pls Like is a vlogging satire on bbc3, it has lots of new ideas, many of them good ones, and has respect for its topic in a way I haven't seen before. The two big problems with it are that the script seems undercooked and it is clearly too scared to get serious or dark at any time because it's for kids. Still, it's ok.

Also seen two episodes of The Bisexual, billed as a 'comedy drama' so I guess it belongs here, even if it's not really at all funny. I like how well-observed it is, the characters really feel like real people in a way they so rarely do, the stories are meandering, but meandering is a good thing, leads to good dialogue, could not care less about the plot. I think it's received some flak from the gammony UK viewers for being too, uh, intersectional, but obv. that's their problem, not the show's. The only reason I'm not enjoying it that much is that even though it's a show about lesbians and bisexuals written and directed by an Iranian-American woman, it's still about successful media/creative people in London, and I really don't want to know anything more about the inner lives of successful media/creative people in London at this point.

-watching nothing for years

Bob Mortimer was wonderful on WILTY tonight.

The last leg was... Strange.

Oh I was wondering if anyone would post about Desiree Akhivan's The Bisexual. I really liked her films Appropriate Behaviour and Miseducation of Cameron Post, so was looking forward to this. But it seems incredibly flimsy and insubstantial, and not that funny - so I was actually having trouble concentrating on it. Probably the best bit was conveying the grimeyness of East London, in the housing and social venues.

pls like s1 was better than it had any right to be. mainly because of the guy playing james wirm. but s2 is doing nothing for me. though i have only watched ep 1.

It isn't funny, the Irish writer character is imo irredeemable, but I am getting quite into it anyway, Desiree is just really good at playing herself.