The League of Gentlemen - C/D? (now with added Psychoville)

Yeah, I'm aware I'm swimming against the tide there.

I enjoyed that one.

I commented on the UK Comedy thread, but I watched this Sunday night and found it a bit 'will this do?' It was almost worth it for the Bobby Davro clip.

I've only dabbled, but my favourites have been

A Quiet Night In
Bernie Clifton's Dressing Room
Once Removed
The Riddle of the Sphinx

The rhyming one in the hotel was so far onto the whimsy scale I don't quite know how I made it through.

(wasn't that hotel one based on some shakespeare?)

It was all in iambic pentameter. It was clever and inventive but it was so damned pleased with itself! Farce? FARSE, morelike.

I realise I'm not being entirely rational.

If anyone was thinking out of nostalgia, or even boredom, watching the last live show on iPlayer (the Beeb screened it last night) then for the love of Christ don't. Absolutely execrable. Shockingly bad.

A day later I'm still annoyed at just how bad/lazy this was. To save you the effort:

The conclusion of the reunion specials (Tubbs in the photo booth, 'wife mine now') plays on the big screen then Edward and Tubbs sing a version of 'Papa Can You Hear Me' from Yentl.
Gatiss does the bingo caller monologue from the reunion shows. (Familiarity makes this less successful than the first time it was on,but it's still excellent.)
Bernice appears on the big screen 'backstage' reading a question from the audience to which her answer is basically "suck it up, snowflake". (More on this later.)
Herr Lipp gets two people from the audience to read out German phrases that sound a bit rude as homophones in English. (Which completely undoes the excellent work in the movie.)
Dr Chinnery slices the face off a panda with a laser. (No, it really is just that. No real setup or routine to go with it to speak of.)
Bernice appears on the big screen 'backstage' reading a question from the audience to which her answer is basically "suck it up, snowflake". (More on this later, again.)
Aunty Val is getting married again, Papa Laz is doing the ceremony. (It's about 5 interminable response of call & response blackface ooga-booga and monkey dancing. Really.)
Benjamin recalls a morning when Uncle Harvey pissed on him, Aunty Val shit on him, he spewed on Harvey who then got a massive hard-on. (Medical terms make everything funny, right?)
Les McQueen sings a song about his failed life in music. (Jeremy Dyson appears on the big screen during it, in probably the least embarrassing part of the whole endeavour.)
Bernice appears on the big screen 'backstage' reading a question from the audience to which her answer is basically "suck it up, snowflake". A guy in the audience claims it's fake shock so she comes out from round the back and shoots him with a crossbow. (Then leaves without a punchline.)
Pauline reveals her dementia and death were faked for the insurance. She kills Ross and then her and Mickey have sex. (The big joke in this part is her spitting spunk after a blow job into a glass.)
Tubbs has a nightmare after a Scottish Theresa May steals away Edward because of something to do with her fanny that I can't remember. She snaps back to the present, her and Edward reprise the Yentl song and he blows up the mine. (With no jokes.)

Piss poor.

God when was this, performed?

Last year, post-reunion tour.

I enjoyed it when it was actually live, although the first half which was mostly classic sketches was definitely better and perhaps we were carried along in the momentum. They were never very good at gross-out humour and I remember thinking it didn't translate well to being at the back of a theatre.

Sounds like they only screened the second half of the show?

Apparently the first half was a greatest hits thing in black tie? So yes, just the second half.

Inside #9 starts again on monday

I like the characters but that just felt like fan service to me.

Yeah but pretty lovable fan service. My partner has never seen Psychoville and still enjoyed it.

I've got to admit I did a little cheer when he showed up at the door.

thought the referee one was great but that psychoville one was dire. see also the league of gentlemen specials, they're much better off putting plenty of distance between themselves and that cartoon grotesquery (which I did like back in the day)

Ah no, I love a bit of cartoon grotesquery every now and then!

Agree the LoG specials were rubbish.

been reading reviews of last night and there clearly seems to be a clamour for new psychoville material so I should probably just say that it's not for me

Referee one was tremendous.

payoff was tremendous

Yes! Haven't really paid attention to these guys for ages and very much enjoyed that referee story, even if you can see the writing process a bit too clearly at times. The punchline was excellent.

Never seen Psychoville so didn't recognise that last night but it was less good because same old obsessions they've already worn out. Didn't hate it tho.

The best five or so Inside No. 9s are up there with the best British telly of the last ten years but the self-consciously creepy ones are usually the worst.

it's the one everyone mentions but i'd put 12 days of christine up against any half hour of british telly ever. i cried

I loved Psychoville but it didn't really translate to a one-off here.
Loved the ref one.

there's a podcast for each episode of the new series, inside inside no. 9

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0824y01

Rewatched League with its new 'jokes of the time' warning (which seems strange attached to the reunion specials) and the first two series really feel like radio forced into the telly.

It's funnier than I was worried I might find it, but an awful lot of the humour is in the 'laugh at the grotesques' category, like some modern freaks how. Gatiss' monologues are a treat though.

I've also realised the opening titles are formatted directly like Chopping Mall, which I'm not sure I've heard the connection before. Will bring it up with them when the twitter strike is over.

That new Inside #9 was something.

Did you like? I'm a sucker for this kind of clever-clever meta stuff but could easily imagine it seeming insufferable to others.

I enjoyed it a lot, but then I'm (as are Pemberton and Shearsmith) a fan of pantomime and music hall which are very closely related. I'm also a sucker for 'your expectations were confounded and thence the humour arose' so the Genoa/Chicago/Alaska joke was my highlight.

I wouldn't be surprised if many found it exceptionally annoying though, especially the ultra-meta stuff from Gemma Whelan.

i'd've put the meta episode later in the series. seemed odd to start there.

it was a "clever" excuse to have tons of dad-jokes (and I liked it)

I thought it was funny and annoying.

watched last night and enjoyed.

The meta stuff was an excuse to get the 'creatively bankrupt with this series' comment in before anyone else did.

I enjoyed the Reggie Perrin throwback with the leather chair.

I'm completely ignorant of whatever genre of theatre they were riffing on so a lot went over my head, but I applaud the audacity and ambition and it still made me laugh a good few times. I'd like to think there are a handful of nerds around the country who got all the references and were totally wigging out over this episode.

i'd've put the meta episode later in the series. seemed odd to start there.

Didn't last season open with a fairly but not quite as oblique Shakespeare parody?

oh, that was first of series 4, but yes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commedia_dell%27arte - they mentioned this early on. (but, yes, peculiar italian thing that i only know by references in other things, Punch and Judy being the most obvious)

i just thought it was particularly perverse having the first episode after a long delay not show the faces of the main cast.

I'd like to think there are a handful of nerds around the country who got all the references and were totally wigging out over this episode.

indeed, the Cook'd and Bomb'd forum, which was namechecked towards the start of the episode.

(but, yes, peculiar italian thing that i only know by references in other things, Punch and Judy being the most obvious)

My knowledge of commedia dell'arte comes mostly from commentary tracks on Italian western blu rays, but its influence looms so large over modern comedy that I felt I "got" most of the references even w/o being particularly familiar with the artform itself.

i just thought it was particularly perverse having the first episode after a long delay not show the faces of the main cast.

red rag to a bull with that lot.

Most recent mainstream drop of commedia dell'arte probably comes from Upstart Crow where, for reasons that are never properly explained, Spencer Jones plays Will Kempe as an allegory of Ricky Gervais and insists that he's huge in Italy where they're much more educated about comedy* (specifically commedia dell'arte) and you just don't get why he's a comedy genius because you're thick). He talks a fair bit about the tropes and characters and how they interact.

* Without giving Ben Elton too much credit, this may be a reference to Kempe's Jigs being very much like commedia dell'arte - although probably a more likely forerunner of pantomime just because it's British - although it's entirely probable this was just concurrent development of an idea since there isn't a huge link placing Kempe in Italy until after he retired from the stage.

the inside inside number 9 (listening now) covers pretty much everything we've mentioned here.

apparently they had all of series 6 written, couldn't film it because of covid. so started writing series 7 during lockdown, then got asked to make them covid friendly, and this was one from series 7 filmed a lot earlier than planned.

first two of the new series have been quite good imo. must get into the podcast habit again

Underwhelmed by the first one, the second was alright. I'm getting a bit tired of both of them as performers.

Ha, was thinking they had really gone downhill. I still appreciate that they're making them but they're treading the same sort of ground.

Second one was very, very obvious. Suspicions were aroused when they said beforehand "inspired by a film but we're not going to name it so it doesn't spoil anything", but it was dropping references from the first couple of minutes.

Didn't like the one on the lake much either tbh.

I feel like Reece Shearsmith plays the same character in everything I see him outside of I9 these days

He even does inside Inside really.

I tend to watch the first and last five minutes and skip the rest now. At some point after eight-six series you'd think they would've figured out how to create actual people as opposed to the same old saucy postcard caricatures.

Watched the David Morrissey football one again recently, that's still the series highpoint for me.

The David Morrissey one was good and advanced all the way through, but the plot was far too convoluted.

Exactly how far had he gone? Did he fake the whole betting syndicate? Was the affair with the player just to unsettle him?

Very weak episode tonight.

I really enjoyed The Wicker Man one. There are a couple of duds in each series but for me the overall quality hasn't really dropped very much.