Given Taskmaster is my 9yo's favourite programme this is fab news
― dicbo=v2-ubswizzb&hrt (stevie), Tuesday, 16 May 2023 18:04 (one year ago) link
The Change. was a week late to this but caught the (signed) repeat. it's Bridget Christie and quite a cast of guest stars and episode one went down well.
― koogs, Wednesday, 28 June 2023 18:17 (one year ago) link
We zipped through the whole of The Change in one go the other night and enjoyed it a lot.
― Tim, Wednesday, 28 June 2023 18:46 (one year ago) link
i like it because it is slow and slightly weird. also, forest of dean.
― koogs, Wednesday, 28 June 2023 18:48 (one year ago) link
i lolled several times but couldn't explain to you why
― koogs, Wednesday, 28 June 2023 18:49 (one year ago) link
also this week and next bbc2 seems to have a random episode of various comedies on at 10 every night. Lenny Henry yesterday, Ellie and Natasha tonight, Big Train tomorrow. send a bit random but it'll be nice to see some of it again. they could do this on bbc4 like they do totp.
― koogs, Wednesday, 28 June 2023 18:57 (one year ago) link
Ellie and Natasha was very enjoyable.
― chap, Tuesday, 4 July 2023 18:14 (one year ago) link
my mistake, it's Ellie and *Natasia*, her from WWDITS and Stath Lets Flats. yes, caught it all last year on bbc iii
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/p0c99012/ellie-natasia
didn't get to the end of Big Train, seemed slow somehow.
Smell Of next week...
― koogs, Tuesday, 4 July 2023 19:05 (one year ago) link
the change, eps 5 and 6, groundbreaking in their quiet way.
― koogs, Friday, 7 July 2023 17:27 (one year ago) link
do you think baddiel and skinner will do “three lions (‘26)”?
― here 1st (roxymuzak), Sunday, 13 August 2023 13:46 (one year ago) link
Ghosts US series 2 starts tonight on bbc3, 2 a night
Dara's current standup show is also on bbc2 tonight. he's spent the weekend telling people with tickets not to watch it!
― koogs, Monday, 21 August 2023 10:59 (one year ago) link
still no dedicated taskmaster thread? (that i can find)
taskmaster new zealand is on e4xtra (freeview ch31) nightly at 11ish
― koogs, Tuesday, 29 August 2023 08:12 (one year ago) link
A friend of mine is going to be on Taskmaster Portugal :D
― Daniel_Rf, Tuesday, 29 August 2023 08:46 (one year ago) link
A friend of mine did Taskmaster and I was so disappointed that they weren't an absolute comedy gold legend at it. I'm still insanely jealous, like.
― ailsa, Tuesday, 29 August 2023 18:57 (one year ago) link
aisla is mates with David Baddiel, pass it on
― Daniel_Rf, Tuesday, 29 August 2023 18:59 (one year ago) link
Hahahaha. No.
― ailsa, Tuesday, 29 August 2023 19:05 (one year ago) link
i think we mentioned it at the time, not realising all the circumstances (serious illness)
― koogs, Tuesday, 29 August 2023 19:25 (one year ago) link
Yeah, tbf he was also shit at it because it's not the way his brain works. Some people don't embrace silliness (which is why VCM was also rubbish at it).
― ailsa, Tuesday, 29 August 2023 19:29 (one year ago) link
i liked the way vcm just spent one task learning to ride a bike
the aforementioned dara show was great in a non-comedy kind of way. i mean it was funny in parts but the big story took it further
― koogs, Tuesday, 29 August 2023 19:35 (one year ago) link
Yeah, Dara's show was really good. My mum is not really one for a standup show, but I felt the big story would resonate with her, and she really enjoyed it.
Last week I went to see Rhod Gilbert doing a work in progress show about his cancer journey, and it was similarly great.
(This is a man not afraid to embrace silliness and thus one of my favourite Taskmaster contestants ever)
― ailsa, Tuesday, 29 August 2023 20:05 (one year ago) link
I think I've said it before but Taskmaster NZ S2 is the best series of the whole franchise, even moreso than Bob Mortimer and Sally Phillips.
S3 has a few tasks where it genuinely looks like the person taking part has had some kind of breakdown.
S4 is being broadcast at the moment and has Karen O'Leary on it so I have high hopes.
― Hello I'm shitty gatsworth (aldo), Tuesday, 29 August 2023 20:36 (one year ago) link
enjoying taskmaster NZ (all new tasks, which helps) but i went to wikipedia to see who these people were and the winner was right there, highlighted in pink but, tbh, 4 episodes in and i'm having trouble believing it
― koogs, Friday, 1 September 2023 08:15 (one year ago) link
Ha! Exactly the same thing happened to me last night.
― Tim, Friday, 1 September 2023 08:38 (one year ago) link
I've watched clips of some of the Taskmaster remakes on youtube, tbh I think I prefer the ones that are not in English and you have to infer what's going on and what each contestant's schtick is - ok so this guy must be like the Norwegian Johnny Vegas, that kind of thing
― soref, Friday, 1 September 2023 08:48 (one year ago) link
S4 is very much a slow burner, there's one contestant who is very funny being himself, but not so much so when he tries to be.
KO'L very disappointing, apparently she is a lesbian and has a wife although you'd never know and she never mentions it. And she only uses it as part of her solution for one or two tasks an episode.
Anyway 6 episodes broadcast and it's the tightest series ever, I think there are 7 points separating the contestants. (This may be because nobody is consistently good - one of the prize tasks saw a maximum score of 2).
Can't find a source for TM Australia yet.
― Hello I'm shitty gatsworth (aldo), Friday, 1 September 2023 08:53 (one year ago) link
We watched the first episode of the NZ one and it was good in a different way. Obviously much of the joy of UK one is "here's people you know doing stupid things", which is missing here. And I love the fact that right out of the gate two of the people on it are related, because of course. Did all these just happen in the last year or so? I wonder why we don't have one in Ireland yet.
― trishyb, Friday, 1 September 2023 09:04 (one year ago) link
11pm on e4extra (not 4, not more4, not even e4 but e4extra) seems like a bit of a waste for these, although there is more sexual content than usual if s1 is anything to go by
my epg search has turned up TM Sweden on all4 (series 2, all 8 episodes) and 30 (thirty) episodes (series 1, 2, 3) of TM NZ
― koogs, Friday, 1 September 2023 09:09 (one year ago) link
i think the NZ one might've had a gap between tasks and the live show - there are references to covid but they don't seem to be distancing in the vt
― koogs, Friday, 1 September 2023 09:10 (one year ago) link
That would explain the repeated references to the tasks being recorded a long time ago.
― Tim, Friday, 1 September 2023 09:17 (one year ago) link
I watched the first half hour of the Dara O'Brien thing and it didn't raise a single smirk so I turned it off. Sorry.
― chap, Sunday, 3 September 2023 14:42 (one year ago) link
loved the TM NZ S01E08 costume task
― koogs, Friday, 8 September 2023 19:56 (one year ago) link
Watched Jamie Demetriou's Netflix special 'A Whole Lifetime' the other day. I like this guy, especially the Jarressey short, and Stah Lets Flats. But this didn't quite cut it.
Some occasional laffs, but too many Bo Burnham-esque musical pieces in which the joke hinges on the song and singing being deliberately bad. There's even a very tiresome song-and-dance social commmentary piece at the end about the mundane things people write on Facebook etc.
But I didn't come here to talk about that show. I came here to talk about toilet humour.
Maybe it's me getting old and boring, but I've noticed a lot of UK comedy lately seems to fall back on cheap and childish scatological laughs.
At the start of 'A Whole Lifetime', a schoolboy chucks a bucket of water at Demetriou's arse to "make it look like you've taken a really wet shit". Later a man on a stag-do soils himself in a pub in an over-enthusiastic display of machismo.
It's not that there isn't a time and place for the odd well-executed gross-out joke, but when it's the punchline that the sketch has been leading towards, it feels like a cop out; like the writers couldn't think of a way to end it so they just fall-back on someone shitting themselves.
For nostalgia's sake I listened to a bit of the recent(ish) Fonejacker podcast, an audible reboot of the 2009 show. I wasn't expecting great things to be honest - I liked the show back in the day, but couldn't imagine it working too well now. It turned out to be fine really, other than parts where, again, the calls just devolve into the prankster talking about 'tits and arses' etc until the victim hangs up. There's no real joke there - it's just schoolboy stuff.
Even Philomena Cunk, whose (much as I like her) schtick might be wearing a bit thin now - I saw a clip of her asking a historian about Greek audiences being able to see "right up wrestlers' bumholes" apropos of them being naked. Later "If Victorians saw a penis they'd probably have a stroke".
It's not totally unfunny. Maybe I've become a total prig in my middle age. But I just think it's a bit lazy, a bit "hurr hurr poo and wee", especially for comedians I think of as being a bit above all that.
Is this even a new thing? Are we so keen to carry on Carrying On? At least those old films worked with double-entendres, cleverly weaving the smutty stuff into the jokes. These recent examples just feel like toilet humour for toilet humour's sake.
― Stomp Jomperson (dog latin), Wednesday, 13 September 2023 14:49 (one year ago) link
"Adult" humour. I remember, years ago, seeing Stanley Baxter being interviewed about alternative comedy and saying it seemed kind of immature to him.
― Monthly Python (Tom D.), Wednesday, 13 September 2023 17:03 (one year ago) link
I think of the late 90's/early 00's as the period when scatological humour was most popular, tho the examples I can think of are US (South Park, Farrely Bros)...I guess Inbetweeners was a UK manifestation of this? Anyway don't think it's prevalent currently at all.
― Daniel_Rf, Wednesday, 13 September 2023 20:57 (one year ago) link
Ayoade being quoted on the cover of this is depressing as fuck. pic.twitter.com/srByG0xorA— JC (@Jonnyishh) September 13, 2023
― NickB, Wednesday, 13 September 2023 22:57 (one year ago) link
Oof.
― Lumpy pillows, kiss my ass. Put that in your book (stevie), Thursday, 14 September 2023 07:40 (one year ago) link
Linehan looks like someone drew a face on a balloon that was drifting away
― Lumpy pillows, kiss my ass. Put that in your book (stevie), Thursday, 14 September 2023 07:41 (one year ago) link
Jesus, I have a creeping sense of horror that someone will buy me that for Christmas.
― trishyb, Thursday, 14 September 2023 07:45 (one year ago) link
'The publisher described the memoir as "emotionally charged" and "by turns hilarious and harrowing". Linehan "reveals the secrets of the writing room and colourfully describes the high-octane atmosphere of a sitcom set", the publisher said. "But he also berates an industry where there was no one to stand by his side when he needed help".'
Hard to know who this is for. Also it's only 288 pages long which seems short. Supposedly a tiny publisher too.
― piscesx, Thursday, 14 September 2023 09:40 (one year ago) link
!
https://i.imgur.com/OpONw0V.jpeg
― piscesx, Thursday, 14 September 2023 09:44 (one year ago) link
Tiny publisher, tiny violin.
― Monthly Python (Tom D.), Thursday, 14 September 2023 09:47 (one year ago) link
Pulp me faster, tiny publisher
― Lumpy pillows, kiss my ass. Put that in your book (stevie), Thursday, 14 September 2023 09:50 (one year ago) link
That's a who's who if ever I saw one
― Stomp Jomperson (dog latin), Thursday, 14 September 2023 09:52 (one year ago) link
Not so much a who's who as a "Who's that?"
― piscesx, Thursday, 14 September 2023 10:03 (one year ago) link
outspoken transphobes and Spiked contributors exclusively
― Stomp Jomperson (dog latin), Thursday, 14 September 2023 10:04 (one year ago) link
becoming a living litmus test feels like a truly dismal fate to bring upon oneself. making it so that nobody can engage with you in any way that isn't charged to a polarity
― imago, Thursday, 14 September 2023 10:07 (one year ago) link
there is absolutely no way that this book will be free of libellous statements, he can't resist writing them and there's no way this publisher employs an editor competent/brave enough to fix them
― the world is your octopus (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Thursday, 14 September 2023 11:46 (one year ago) link
Good to see Kathy Burke calling out the Glinch
That BLOKE with the book coming out once tweeted at me demanding why I wasn’t sticking up for another BLOKE on here. All in the name of women’s rights apparently. Funniest thing he’d written in while to be fair.— Kath 🇺🇦💙🙀🇪🇺✊🏾 (@KathyBurke) September 14, 2023
― piscesx, Thursday, 14 September 2023 17:25 (one year ago) link
Guess who shows up in the replies?
― Monthly Python (Tom D.), Thursday, 14 September 2023 17:34 (one year ago) link
Fairly sure Ayoade has also continued to stump for Woody Allen in recent years, so unfortunately there is precedent here. Still stings though
― vexingvexillologist, Thursday, 14 September 2023 22:15 (one year ago) link