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

Oh christ, that was terrible @ Andy Parsons on Mock the Week just now.

Actually, Oh christ, that was terrible @ Andy Parsons.

You've gotta bear in mind that Ince was the product of a rape and his sister was kidnapped and murdered though

xpost

just got offed OTM re The Thick Of It 1:2 funniness

i'm surprised how much i'm laughing at fonejacker. does that make me a bad man?

no just brainless

^^^ this

Still Game was rubbish :-/

i caught a bit of trevor mcdonalds news knight on sunday. it was hilarious. incredibly satirical and genuinely funny. especially marcus brigstock, that guy can crack a gag!

...

oooh mustn't forget the sterling work of sue perkins, so good to see a female lesbian trading jokes with a knight of the realm. the footlights really have been working overtime in the last few years producing comedy giant after comedy giant. it really was like all the funny bits of have i got news for you without the all the other stuff round it. marvellous!

i saw it once. they gave reg hunter a script. this is by no means a good idea.

sue perkins is gay?

well we've lost a lot of uk comedy MVPs this week but for whoever's left, a video beef from ricky responding to the haters...

http://www.rickygervais.com/

it's well trainwreck.

i watched that expecting something about live aid. nada. i hate you.

i actually watched that.

i hate you.

live earth.

MOST INFLUENTIAL COMEDIES
1 Monty Python's Flying Circus
2 Only Fools and Horses
3 Blackadder
4 Little Britain
5 The Royle Family
6 The Morecambe and Wise Show
7 Spitting Image
8 The Young Ones
9 The Office
10 The Vicar of Dibley
Source: UKTV Gold

i'd like to make it clear i was sort of trolling when i was saying news-knight is "good" upthread. it isn't.

UKTV Gold viewers seem to have some new definition of "influential" that none of the rest of us do.

Little Britian in the short term is pretty OTM though, look at the BBC 3 comedy roster. And it is definetely represntative of a clutural moment that encompasses the likes of The Friday Night Project and Blunder whether it actually influenced these thing is debatable but y know as a certain ilx dude likes to point out the whole concept of influence in these contexts is kinda silly.

Go on, justify inclusion of Vicar of Dibley then :-)

OK it revived teh idea of the trad sitcom. My Family and My Hero can be seen as following directly from its undemanding but slick mix of mild slapstick and loveably quirky characters centred round "national treasure" type lynchpin.

NO ONE FOOT IN THE GRAVE, NO CREDIBILITY

WHAT DID THAT "INFLUENCE"?

The Vicar Of Dibley is probably the one that stuck out most for me as well, although OFAH is kind of an odd one as well.

Spitting Image could be argued two ways, either directly influencing the Ianucci shows - although surely something like TW3 was more influential in terms of political satire? - or in allowing people to make non-acted comedy shows.

Little Britain undoubtedly massively influential, for promoting the idea you didn't have to be funny to get a comedy made on BBC3.

Um, The Worst Week of My Life?

(also surely Keeping Up Appearances pre-dates Vicar of Dibley for that description you gave up there, in fact probably OFAH could count as well)

WWOML = influenced by OGITG, well-meaning buffoon has horrible things happen to him a lot through no fault of his own, has long-suffering partner who endures it.

2.4 Children and several other sitcoms were still going when VoD started - no 'trad sitcom' revival required. It's influence on anything good or bad really is 0.

UK Gold shouldn't really be wasting their time on this matter anwyay, not when they have Mel Gibson films and The New Adventures Of Old Christine to be filling their schedules with.

Coming less than 18 months after the last 'Allo 'Allo, it's pretty hard to argue TVOD could seriously represent a "revival". Ab Fab started 2 years before TVOD as well.

New Adventures of Old Christine is dreadful (note: have only seen one and a half episodes).

I am not meaning to suggest that One Foot in the Grave *was* actually influential, but it pre-dates Dibley and was 10000000x better.

OFITG influential in at least spawning memorable catchphrase which the VoD didn't (mercifully).

UKTV Gold viewers seem to have some new definition of "influential" that none of the rest of us do.

I have no clear idea of "influential" mean in this, and most other, cases

No I would argue it's a revival of the trad sitcom in that it's so much slicker than 2.4 or Allo, Allo. It's a trad british sitcom but Curtis gave it an almost American feeling. maybe.

saw adverts for new IT Crowd series. next friday? appears to contain vince noir. it sounds digusting but is actually quite beautiful.

lol goths are depressed. Keep 'em coming linehan and/or matthews

OK it revived teh idea of the trad sitcom. My Family and My Hero can be seen as following directly from its undemanding but slick mix of mild slapstick and loveably quirky characters centred round "national treasure" type lynchpin.

-- acrobat, Monday, August 13, 2007 3:48 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Link

the trad sitcom never went away.

Father Ted = most influential non-UK European comedy?

Or does it count as UK because it was aired on C4?

it was made for channel 4 thru hat trick, so isn't really non-uk. and to be fair, can you name a single live-action comedy that has ever aired here from the continent?

monsieur hulot should have been a tv series, it would have removed the necessity for mr. bean's existence

Has Father Ted actually influenced anything? It was fairly traditional as well.

Has Father Ted actually influenced anything?

Black Books, for a start. Anything written by one of its creators.

Right, so Graham Linehan influenced himself to write a sitcom, having written one before. OK.

I think it's possible to influence oneself. Besides, I'm sure there are more examples of FT's influence.

Kudos to the C+B poster who note that you can recreate an episode of Mock the Week in your own house just by repeatedly saying "paedophile" in a Scottish accent.

Yeh the trad sitcom was very much a going concern when Dibley turned up but there is something slicker yet blander about it than what had before. It truly is the Tony Blair of comedy.

I don't think I've seen an entire episode of The VOD. But then, I've never seen so much as one second of "Black Books"

You're always saying you've never done this or that.

Gervais defends "Brent Dance" at Di gig:

However, the comic told radio station Heart: “After the Diana concert there was one guy – who works for a tabloid – and he wrote that the crowd booed.

“They didn’t boo, they loved it. People love it when something goes wrong and I was standing there and they demanded I do the ’robot dance’ and it was funny.

“But this guy wrote: ’He’s rubbish, everything he’s ever done is rubbish and it’s all over for him’.

“That week I got nominated for four Emmy Awards, sold 100,000 DVDs of Extras and signed up for two Hollywood movies. So bring on the backlash... I want him writing about me every day.”

I can imagine Gervais spending about 2 hours just insisting 'the criticism does not bother me' to his peers, ala Coogan in The Man Who Thinks He's It.

Is Mock The Week the funniest British comedy show on TV at the mo?

Talking of "signing up for two Hollywood movies - I caught a trailer for the adaptation of Neil Gaiman's "Stardust" at the weekend. Gervais being billed above Robert De Niro will do his ego the world of good...