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

Not that I think entertainers should stay away from politics or anything

They absolutely should be able to offer their political perspectives, but everyone else equally has the right to challenge them - which I think is what a number of these Twitter loudmouth celebs take issue with.

i liked rose matefeo from the moment she curled up in one of the Hypothetical chairs. her stint on taskmaster confirmed this, the ghillie suit, the serenade task. and i thought she got Dead Pixels character pitch perfect.

so Horn Dog (bbc1 yesterday, iplayer) was a bit of a surprise. her standup is a bit full on, talking almost too fast, swearing lots. funny though, and the end was a triumph.

I found Jessica Knappert very charming on Taskmaster, is Drifters any good?

maybe geoff norcott can get his own show now?

Taskmaster returns on thursday.

fave thing at the moment though, the thing i find myself laughing at most, is Teen First Dates, because the kids are naturally funny (and mostly charming. think there's only been one car crash so far, the chicken guy)

I've been loving Teen First Dates too, particularly the kiddy who kept on thinking calling his very short date a hobbit was very good flirting.

Chicken guy was excruciating.

and, of course, the episode after i mention it was the worst yet. I'd never watch the adult version because i imagine it to be full of players and people seemingly set up to be laughed at and the kids version has been nicely devoid of that, until last night.

The only time I ever saw the adult one they had a Tory couple with one whose claim to fame was trolling a guy on lbc and one who thought she was the most attractive woman to ever work in Westminster. It was nauseating, and also a bit like a fast show sketch, and it felt like they weren’t real people. I didn’t watch another episode.

At its best, the adult one can be genuinely quite sweet and heartwarming. But yeah there are plenty of pricks on it too.

Just caught up with Crashing on Netflix - overall quite patchy and obviously Waller-Bridge finding her feet, but the curry night episode is flat out hilarious.

Comic Strip repeats on London live are now beyond the ones i ever saw at the time. this one, Les Dogs, has Kate Bush in it.

(last couple have been a mess though)

This one wasn't exactly very coherent, as well as not being even remotely funny but I suspect it wasn't really designed to be.

i do love the vindictive single-person tasks on taskmaster but tonight's was especially classic: "Fart. Fastest wins."

(except that ended up quite disturbing)

I haven't laughed as much in ages as I did at the unexpected ending to that task.

anyone watched Frank of Ireland?

Quite astoundingly shite based on the first episode (and any other clips I've seen)

Like we all know TV is a cesspool of nepotism but you think someone would have stepped in at some point

i managed five minutes.

I watched the whole thing because you never know when you're going to see someone you know, but yeah, it wasn't good.

Only saw the end but that wasn't very good.
Partridge is back next Friday though!

Counterpoint: Frank of Ireland isn't total shit, merely very mediocre. C4 hyping it like the new Father Ted, though.

Scots seem to love it based on an informal survey of my Facebook feed.

Frank Of Ireland absolute embarrassing joke drought. What has Domhnal Gleeson done to deserve this?

The fart Taskmaster was hilarious. "It's like a casserole down there."

Mike Wozniak very good all round on Taskmaster. I feel sorry for Charlotte, hope she wins a show at least.

Isn't his brother the show's creator? xp

he's got previous with greg on Man Down, which i keep forgetting. but yes, from about 5 seconds into episode 1, he was obviously going to be good value.

My very first exposure to After Life was the scene with the plastic surgery casualty, and I was howling. Things got really sentimental after that, I wonder what the ilx consensus is on this one. I tried a Google search to no avail

i am enjoying Starstruck after the first two episodes. nice casting, fun acting, decent script, clearly a fantasy but a fairly compassionate and enjoyable one with about two genuine laughs per half hour. Matafeo is a new face for me and is welcome.

her series of Taskmaster was good

My boss just recommended Starstruck to me. Really like Rose Matafeo so will definitely give it a go.

re starstruck : i watched 3 eps today and really enjoyed it.
doesn't do anything out of the box, just some very welcome, feel good vibes with lots of chuckles.
looking forward to seeing the rest this weekend.
and yeah, she was very good on taskmaster.

I can only watch one episode at a time because Ireland, but I really enjoyed the first episode. Exactly what forks and mark e said. Nothing groundbreaking, but a very good feeling from the whole thing.

Did you see the film she did with Neville from the Harry Potter films? It's good too.

Did you see the film she did with Neville from the Harry Potter films? It's good too.

not yet. been waiting for it to hit a streaming service which it has to given circumstances.
saw a clip on the last leg (i think !?), and it looked really good.

Her comedy special, Horndog, is really good - we were keen to see her after, er, seeing her and David O'Doherty on Celebrity Pointless.

We saw her live at Kilkenny a few years ago. Annoyingly, she was on a bill with three very well-known Irish comics, so everyone was there to see them, and she got very nervous because it wasn't going all that well (it wasn't horrible or anything, just, you know) and she talked really really fast and got a bit squeaky, but we liked her very much all the same.

The new This Time was a mixed bag, as always.

agreed, but I liked it. I got more out of s1 on a rewatch. the three different phone icons was spot on, can't remember what else cracked me up

The body language section was good.

Motherland starts again on monday

followed by new Inside Number 9

For some reason, I watched all of the new Motherland yesterday even though I feel very conflicted about it. It makes me anxious rather than making me laugh and the way people behave is stupidly implausible, at times. I want to like it more than I do but I find it mean spirited a lot of the time. I think it's mostly carried by some very winning performances & the laughs are good when they do come.

The series has a surprisingly upbeat and uncynical ending which hopefully signals a new direction for the show and seems to be a hint that that will be foregrounding one character who's only been a residual presence until now and is played by an actor I'm really quite keen on.

I'm going to settle for the weekly pace because of the Inside#9 double bill but I thought there were a fair few flags the focus might change.

"I was the head of product development for Glaxo SmithKline."

“Are you sure you didn’t work in Greggs?”

lol at hidden text with no actual spoilers or names in it

there's like 1 semi-likeable character in the entire show, i'm not even sure i enjoy it.

(unlike, say, starstruck which is funny and smart and charming - "i didn't want to come empty handed and these are the only things i've seen you eat")

y'all sold me on motherland so i knocked the first season and a few extra episodes out in two nights. Will likely catch up to season 3 by tonight. "not even sure i enjoy it" feels accurate, it's very Sharon Horgan-y and the actors mostly keep me engaged but it's kinda light most of the time and then violently mean on occasion.

Starstruck lost me at episode four when it ran out of ideas and just started recycling the same shakespearean confusions and mistakes to keep them from getting together. fair play on the nod to The Graduate at the end.

(gah spoilers! only 3 episodes have been on telly so far)

I don't know if it's very Sharon-Horgany as much as very all over the place. Like whoever wrote everything revolving around the kevin pig-pit slapstick in s2 hadn't spoken to anyone else who'd written the other parts of the episode.

xp sorry, didn't know! in any case, i'm not spoiling anything with that comment that you couldn't figure out by just watching the show, i promise. Would be curious if other folks who didn't binge starstruck have different opinions.

the Horgan-ishness: black and gross-out humor, feints toward humanity promptly chopped down as the payoff of the scene, devastating personal loss played off as nature of the game, all male characters have the intelligence and maturity of a damaged teen

That's food for thought, tbh.

in any case, i'm not spoiling anything with that comment that you couldn't figure out by just watching the show, i promise.

you did specifically describe the final scene of the series, and contrasted them with your own expectations from just watching the show, tbh

i feel bad! honestly, I assumed you guys got them all at the same time and had already had a fair amount of time to see the show but i guess the international t0rr3nt scene works on a different delivery timeline.
anyways, it NODS to the graduate, that's not where it lands. I am also a bit annoyed that it got far enough up its own ass to stop coming up with new ideas after the first ninety minutes.