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

I watched this on All4 and as soon as the credits started rolling the screen goes to like 1/4 size into the left hand corner of the screen with "you may also like" type links all over the rest of the screen so I couldn't even make out what was happening during the credits. Am I right in thinking that they are swimming back towards the shore but may not make it?

They’re swimming back to shore, but are extremely far out for no apparent reason - both have been swimming and paddling normally, not caught in a rip.

I'm not sure how I feel about that! I did like the episode and will genuinely miss the show and those two characters. Sharon is one stunning lady.

Share your annoyance at All4 shrinking the final moments, jed. Of course, stabbing around to try to find the button that expanded it again and instead quit the whole thing. Modern TV is rubbish.

They’re swimming back to shore, but are extremely far out for no apparent reason - both have been swimming and paddling normally, not caught in a rip.

I thought they were in a rip, simply because they were far out for no apparent reason and appeared to be making no headway back to the shore.

"The Canterbury Tales were written by the Shakespeare of bum jokes, Geoffrey Chaucer"

Cunk's return tonight was triumphant.

cunk is back??

Yes! She was on just now at BBC2, half an hour. She's doing a full history lesson now, from the big bang onwards, to noting that William Wallace shockingly looked like Mel Gibson etc etc

Repeat of the series from last year.

Oh is it? I had no idea, soz

I made it about halfway through one episode of Cunk On Britain and had to stop, you can just hear Brooker's voice coming through everything and it felt really lazy. It's the same thing that's put me off ever watching Black Mirror.

That definitely bothers me with Black Mirror, which I've long given up on. Cunk's still v funny to me in a 'have some easy laughs' way, tg Brooker doesn't bother me about it.

I heard Diane Morgan on Adam Buxton's podcast, and I am definitely with Buxton on this one. I don't like the awkwardness that Diane Morgan thrives on. So, while her pieces to camera are OK, her interviews are unwatchable for me.

I've always found Cunk overrated.

new Partridge starts next monday. info and podcast here:

https://www.radiotimes.com/news/tv/2019-02-18/this-time-with-alan-partridge-review-bbc1/

a "podcast" is like a radio show but with worse sound.

I mainly agree with that. Adam Buxton's is the only podcast I listen to.

i'm about halfway through robin ince and josie long's bookshambles series. tanita tikaram yesterday, which was the most book-centric one for a while (they do tend to ramble). the sound on that is mainly ok*, but they do love a 'live from hay / latitude / australia' episode where it goes downhill.

(* there were a couple of episodes where josie was icing her knee with a bag of peas and you could hear the rustling)

Burnistoun's 60% hit rate still better than nearly everything else on terrestrial television (or iPlayer given it was Scotland only).

Wish they'd get a regular writing gig.

I have been out of the UK for ages and back a couple of years and one thing I can't figure out is Jack Whitehall, is he supposed to be unfunny? Is he doing a parody of a posh guy who isn't funny but gets by on confidence alone? I feel like it isn't a joke, he is just that terrible, but then why is he always on TV, sometimes with people who are actually good? Do some people actually like him? Why?

Bantz, fella. The Archbishop of Bantlebury. Lord Bantlington. Etc.

Death to bantz, double death to posh boy bantz.

Hoping this is good tonight

Alan Partridge just emailed everyone in the BBC. pic.twitter.com/DM3POwgIDu

— Tim Johns (@timoncheese) February 25, 2019

and not forgetting
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D0PjLY6WwAAgNHo.jpg

sending this to everyone at the bbc

Because I love the BBC and I always have. While others might say it’s a smug anachronism full of braying, know-nothing chancers doling out fat commissions to their braying, know-nothing Oxbridge mates, I don’t.

chef's kiss

why is he always on TV, sometimes with people who are actually good?

Who's actually good on TV?

Not falling for that one! If you like you can read it as "significantly less bad"

I saw a bit of Jack Whitehall on the Brits. Fucking hell. Does poshness act as a bulwark against the traditional comedian self-loathing? I hope not - it's more than well-earned.

he played a posh twat character on Fresh Meat, which was funny, but now seems to be trying to just be that character without the jokes or plots.

He isn't trying, it's who he is.

That Fleabag episode was quite traumatic, imo.

I'd never seen it before but hung around after AP and the news. I enjoyed it! Sharp, witty, fast-paced. And a bit traumatic, that too, yes.

LBI, you should definitely watch series one on iplayer.

Tonight's episode convinced me to do just that!

I'll stand alone in having been not completely bowled over by Fleabag S1. I thought it was fine, and well acted more than anything else, but (like many of its peers e.g. Flowers) we're supposed to as viewers draw a correlation between unlikeable and edgy/cool that I just don't get. Plus Crashing had been on not long before it on C4 where PWB played an unlikeable Manic Pixie Girl (look! She plays a ukelele! Edgy!) and I wasn't taken with that either. Pure also did a similar thing recently on C4, and only got away with it by virtue of it being a true story lending a veneer of belief that people would actually put up with their shit.

Talking of people inexplicably acting like cunts 100% of the time, Warren (the new Martin Clunes vehicle on before AP) is absolutely woeful. It's like someone watched One Foot In The Grave and thought what made it popular was unpleasantness and not comedy.

I'll summarise last night:

Warren's business is going badly, because he is a terrible driving instructor who rarely even lets people drive the car. A rival business has started and is getting successful results at the test centre so Warren tries to destroy the owner's life by making nuisance calls round the clock and leaving abusive messages. In a mix-up, Warren finds a dead cat in the road and is accused of running it over, leading to a hate campaign against him on social media, so his girlfriend (wife?) buys the bereft family a cat - which they don't want because of the source, so ends up in Warren's house. Warren is exposed as the nuisance caller and a car chase ensues which culminates in the rival being accidentally run over by a neighbour he had helped to pass leaving him with multiple complex fractures and unable to work for over 6 months which means Warren's business will survive. Hooray! But the jokes aren't over - as the picture fades to the titles the same neighbour runs over the cat. What fun!

A show where the punchline is that a man with a young family (it's explicitly stated there's a baby in his house) is potentially crippled and loses his livelihood and home, and a cat is killed. At prime time. On BBC1.

Have not seen Fleabag S2E01 yet, will watch tonight probably.

I caught the last 30 seconds of Warren. Had they nicked the joke from Friends about Phoebe teaching Joey guitar chords without letting him hold a guitar?

I couldn't believe how dire those 30 seconds were.

That was the 30s that had the jokes in it.

as the picture fades to the titles the same neighbour runs over the cat..

is that before or after they gave the cat a cat scan and found cat cancer

It's the central 'comedy' about his business, that he doesn't let students drive very much or do menial duties for him during their lessons (like take him to the supermarket to do the shopping).

There was a joke last week about fly-tipping asbestos.

Aldo, your summary of Warren was a thousand times funnier than the actual show. Couch potato as I was last night I caught that, too (in between AP and Fleabag), and what a load of shite that was. Dire.

However:

A show where the punchline is that a man with a young family (it's explicitly stated there's a baby in his house) is potentially crippled and loses his livelihood and home, and a cat is killed. At prime time. On BBC1.

― Elitist cheese photos (aldo), Tuesday, March 5, 2019 9:02 AM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This doesn't strike me as problematic? It's a comedy (or supposed to be comedic), a lot of it is fair game imo. I'm fine with brutal, dark punchlines. I'm not fine with the real problem at hand here, which is that Warren is painfully unfunny.

Remember that Aldo's British - the cat is probably the dealbreaker.

No it is just that it isn't funny.

Although for the reasons you point out though the cat is probably why it seems so incongruous.

ps I do not care for cats.

Usually though the brutal punchlines are relating to the main characters - this has caused me to go look up Sitcom Hell based on Tom's theory that a lot of sitcoms serve as visions of hell for their cast.

I had in my defense forgotten the title of that thread.

The Hell in Warren is, as trumpeted in the promo pieces, having to live in the North of England (specifically Preston).

Warren is a classic fish-out-of-water character – a southerner who is forced to move up north to Preston when his partner Anne’s father falls ill.

he takes on the title role of curmudgeonly, tight-fisted southerner (and driving instructor) Warren who is transplanted up north to Preston.

Driving instructor Warren Thompson is forced to move from the south up to Preston

I’d like the writers to make more of Warren being a southerner adrift in Preston

the story centres around Warren Thompson, who has to move from the south to Preston when his partner Anne’s father becomes ill. Once there, he finds that he’s in an area he dislikes

(Thanks, two Radio Times articles)

Thought last night's Fleabag was brilliant. Painfully funny but oof, emotionally devastating too. Was wondering where she could go after the first series but needn't have worried.

Derry Girls back tonight too.

ah yes, the classic fish-out-of-water story of an englishman forced against his will to move to a slightly different part of england

It also goes without saying that the plot mechanism for this fish-out-of-waterism has not been mentioned in the first two episodes, to the extent the ill father was walking about like there was nothing wrong in last night's episode.

I wouldn't have known about it at all if it wasn't for the Radio Times.

the 'moving north' aspect was covered in ep1 of Warren which I unfortunately watched.
will not be bothering with ep2.
truly dreadful.
cannot wait for Derry Girls S2.