TV Catch-Up Week: The IT Crowd/Saxondale

A second series for both these shows. Saxondale returns with Steve Coogan with his own hair blonded and longer. The rest of the cast return to back him up in a very capable manner; however, it seems to have moved away from being a sitcom and into a gentle drama with some humour. The lines can be sharp and the storylines are still of the sitcom variety (small misunderstanding blown into a larger plot and resolved in thirty minutes), but it rolls along softly and all the characters do the same things – Ruth Jones as Magz is understanding as Saxondale’s girlfriend, Morwenna Banks is the common person playing Saxondale’s nemesis, Rasmus Hardiker plays naïve – with the addition of the annoying neighbour representing the worst of suburbia. It isn’t quite as funny as the first series; it makes you wonder if Coogan wasn’t involved, would the BBC still make it?

By contrast, The IT Crowd seems more confident in its second series. The first series was sporadically hilarious but didn’t seem to find its feet completely. The set-up was perfect and the characters good, just a little uneven. This time around, the silliness is left to unfold to its fullest – the brilliant anti-piracy DVD ad, the German cannibal, the Communist smoking story, the stupidity of the new boss laughing at the flies on his window – and is all the more comfortable and funny for it. Graham Linehan has let the show relax into just being funny for the sake of it. I don’t know if its up there with Father Ted or Black Books, but it can be equally funny when it wants to. (The recent news that the US version wasn’t picked up for a series, even with Richard Aoyade as Moss in it, provided a great response by Linehan on his blog, giving insight into how the US version should work, talking about what works in the US and over here).

TV Catch-Up Week: Sketch Shows

There has been a brace of new sketch shows on television recently, trying to capture some Little Britain glory. On digital main channels BBC3 and ITV2, we have It’s Adam and Shelly and Katy Brand’s Big Ass Show respectively. Both are not good. Adam and Shelley do poor characters with silly accents and pointless punchlines; there was even a slightly offensive parody of Monkey, about 20 years too late. Katy Brand is a large lady, so her comedy is mostly shouty, over-the-top comedy, doing lazy versions of famous females (such as Angelina Jolie, who is so sexy she literally sweats sex appeal), but it’s mostly just shouting, as a substitute for actual comedy. The most enjoyable skit was a parody of a Lily Allen video, but that’s not exactly difficult.

Peter Serafinowicz, of Spaced, Darth Maul’s voice, the Tomorrow’s World parody Look Around You, has been given his own show on BBC2. Peter is a good character comedian and is fabulous with voices (he does a great Alan Alda, which is something that doesn’t happen very often) but the sketch show is not good. When you have a sketch where Sherlock Holmes has sex with Dr Watson after solving a case, and nothing else, you are in trouble – doing gay jokes about Holmes? Really? Really? Is that it? According to an interview on Chortle, he seemingly got the show due to a sketch he put on YouTube – he was in the US after doing a pilot and it not being picked up, so decided to do something creative. The only trouble is that the comedy seems to be based on a man who has been doing nothing all day but sitting around watching television and saying how rubbish it is – a robot host for a daytime talk show, a newsreader who is guessing what he is supposed to say, a vacuous E! take-off, Actors Studio parodies, QVC presenters selling tat and knowing it. It is limited and poor to say the least. He does great voices but he needs to find somebody with a sense of humour who has the power to tell him what is funny.

After all this, it was quite a surprise to find myself laughing at a sketch show again. The Armstrong and Miller Show is actually funny – they are a little edgy for BBC1 on a Friday evening, but they still remember that the point of the sketch show is to amuse other people, not just themselves. There are some recurring characters, but there are also comedy ideas played with just for the notion that they are funny, without resorting to mocking easy target celebrities or television parodies. The piece de resistance is the sketch about the chav-talking RAF airmen in World War 2 – the idea itself is sublime but the execution is also funny. Try talking in received pronunciation voice but talking chav – it’s bloody difficult. So three cheers for being funny on the BBC.

TV: Screenwipe

I thought I had written about the unalloyed joy provided by Charlie Brooker before on this blog, but I have been remiss in my expressions of devotion to the vicious and poetic humour and intelligence of this misanthropic television critic.

My knowledge of him started with his painfully funny pastiche of television listings at the website TV Go Home. The next regular fix was the column Screen Burn in The Guide (the entertainment supplement in The Guardian on Saturdays). It is a television review column where Brooker rips into the rubbish that litters the airwaves with precision and profane sarcasm in a wonderfully entertaining read, but he also praises quality television when he sees it (such as The Wire, Deadwood, Battlestar Galactica). There is a collection of the first few years of the column, which is one of the funniest things you will ever read. He now also writes a free-association column for the G2 section of The Guardian on Mondays – archives can be found here. His evisceration of David Cameron is one of the greatest things I have ever read.

He himself is one of the founders and directors of a television company, Zeppotron, which I think shows that he puts his money where his mouth is. He has written for television himself; he wrote for Channel 4’s The Eleven O’Clock Show, co-created and co-wrote Nathan Barley, and wrote for the sketch show Spoons.

However, the funniest thing he is doing on television now is Screenwipe, which is essentially Screen Burn on television but with added swipes at the TV industry itself and the horrors involved. It is the most enjoyable half hour of programming on air at the moment, with Brooker taking the piss out of everything, including himself. In the episode of Tuesday 2 October, he attained a moment of beautiful genius. I had turned over to BBC4 to watch the show, after watching the Stephen Fry documentary about HIV. However, the end credits for Screenwipe were playing – I was completely bemused. Where was the programme? It was 10pm, the Freeview listings showed it was supposed to be on, yet there was a woman in a coat presenting something else. I didn’t understand.

I was looking through the schedules, trying to find out when it was repeated, if we could trust them, so I wasn’t listening to the woman properly. I started to listen more carefully when she said that corners hadn’t been invented until 1839 and that the one she was standing in front of in a street in London was the first invented. It was at this moment that Brooker steps in and shoves her forcefully out of the way – it had all been a joke about the new BBC rules concerning closing credits. The BBC prohibits any ‘content’ to aired during the show’s credits because it would get in the way of the voiceover announcing the next programme (as the credits are squeezed into a small section of the screen and a trailer for the next show takes up half of the space). This was Brooker’s hilarious response to regulations he has to follow on his very own show, and to the marketing pricks who have imposed them. Absolutely inspired.

The rest of the show was the usual mix – indulging in his puerile side in reviewing Billie Piper in The Secret Diary of a Call Girl, an overview of a career in television (from runner through to past-it producer), and his list of The Biggest Cocks and She-Cocks in Advertising (including the annoying Botoxed-woman with her pentapeptides; the winner was the most infuriating advert on television at present for a shampoo product which starts with the line, ‘Everyone knows a bloke like Mickey …’ and features the most smug twat in the universe). Funny, intelligent and, most importantly, passionate about television. It is this that sets Brooker apart; he may be sweary and sarcastic, but it is done with a genuine love for good television and the show reflects the anger when IQ-losing shite is foisted upon the general public.

God bless you, Charlie Brooker.

TV Round-Up: Peep Show, Get A Grip, Harry & Paul

Even though it’s more television chat, I wanted to compare and contrast three comedy programmes from different terrestrial channels and their relevance to each other. Get A Grip, with Ben Elton, on ITV1; Ruddy Hell! It’s Harry and Paul, with Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse, on BBC1; and Peep Show, with David Mitchell and Robert Webb, on Channel 4.

When I was a teenager discovering comedy, Ben Elton was my comedy hero. He co-wrote The Young Ones and made Blackadder funny (two of my top five sitcoms). He was the compere for Saturday Live with his spangly suit. His stand-up spoke to me. I won’t say he was a genius, but he produced a lot of material I liked and still remains with me.

I’m not sure when that changed. Was it when he started writing more novels than anything else? Was it when his only TV output was the ‘Dad’s Army As Police Station’ sitcom The Thin Blue Line? Was it when he started to write the words for We Will Rock You? Or was it when he worked with Andrew Lloyd Webber? Or was it when he had Ronnie Corbett as his regular guest on The Ben Elton Show? I don’t know. All I know is that I can’t believe he’s not funny anymore.

It was this reason that made me watch Get A Grip, his new show on ITV1. Co-hosting with Alexa Chung (a thoroughly annoying and uncharismatic young lass who presents something for ‘yoof’ on Channel 4) but writing it all himself, it is essentially his most recent stand-up tour, also called Get A Grip, but in television form and with someone to bounce his 'jokes' off and do the self-deprecating for him. And it was horrible to watch. Ben uses the same type of routine and style as he did over 10 years ago, only with lots more jokes about babies (as that is all the reference he seems to have now – see, or rather don’t, his recent sitcom with Ardal O’Hanlan, Blessed) and, more embarrassingly, jokes about mother-in-laws. I couldn’t believe my eyes or ears. People have accused him of selling out before, but to do jokes about mother-in-laws? Ben, what’s happened? Entertainers have to adapt to the times, or they get rightly mocked by the new boys on the block, as Ben did before him with his attacks on Benny Hill and Bernard Manning. Ben Elton hasn’t and he seems to have got worse by not realising he is doing the jokes he used to rail against in his youth. Truly sad.

Compare this with Ruddy Hell! It’s Harry and Paul, a new sketch show from Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse. Harry Enfield hasn’t really done anything since the sitcom Celeb, which came out exactly the same time as The Osbournes and thus negated its existence. Enfield has never been a particularly gifted comedian, although he does have some small talent for impersonation and accents, and he always looks incredibly smug and like he is about to corpse all the time when performing sketches. He has been more lucky than anything else, getting in on Saturday Live at the right time with his Stavros and Loadsamoney characters, and then turning the comic Viz into a television series (without Viz having anything to do with it) with Harry Enfield’s Television Programme/Harry Enfield and Chums.

Some of his work has been rather good (the Cholmondley-Warner stuff was particularly satisfying), and some of the characters were worthy of the repetition. His best comedy was probably Sir Norbert Smith: A Life, and shows what he can do mimicking styles. He has mostly been supported by the more talented Whitehouse, who was main creator of characters for him, and who had his own success with The Fast Show. So it is quite surprising to see them together after so many years apart.

However, although they haven’t reinvented the sketch show or developed the scope, they have remembered that the point of a comedy show is to be funny. For the most part, they succeed. Starting off mocking of football with Jose Arroganta and Peskowitz, it is just about laughs – Abramovich buying somebody’s son, the very funny piss-take of Bono and The Edge, and the belated-but-still-funny (particularly the bouncing from side-to-side to escape congress) Laurel and Hardy Brokeback Mountain – which makes for a pleasant change. Not all of it works – the Polish girls in the coffee shop and the South African man in the gym are pretty woeful and very London-centric; the Bill Gates/Steve Jobs sketch was rather obvious and easy; and the juxtaposition of enlightened discussion between builders before sexually harassing a women seems to have been done before, if not by themselves – but at least they are giving it a try and not having to succumb to Little Britain-style antics. Anyone who has a sketch with Nelson Mandela selling his own alcopops can’t be all bad. Not brilliant stuff but not bad either.

Compare with the new series of Peep Show and those two programmes are instantly forgotten. I have long been a fan of both Mitchell & Webb and Peep Show and am really happy to see them doing so well (even if they are doing adverts). Their radio show, That Mitchell and Webb Sound, became the most enjoyable sketch show of recent time, That Mitchell and Webb Look, which was a sketch show that was actually funny and not requiring the crutch of the well-known characters; yes, there were some repeated characters, like the snooker commentators and being themselves between takes, but it wasn’t just catchphrases. They even ridiculed catchphrases with the Numberwang sketch. These were smart, well-written and performed sketches to entertain and amuse. It was a breath of fresh air (the two Nazis talking to each other, which admittedly they had done on the radio show: ‘Are we the baddies?’).

Peep Show, back for its fourth series, is still as blisteringly funny and painful as ever. Mark is marrying Sophie, even though he doesn’t love her, so it’s a challenge as they go back to meet her family for her birthday. (She picks out trend things to wear for him. On picking out a t-shirt with Chairman Mao on it, Mark complains: 'He killed 60 million people.' Sophie: 'That’s more than Stalin.' Mark: 'It’s not a contest.') Mark brings Jez with him for moral support, which backfires terribly when Jez sleeps with Sophie’s mum, after helping Sophie’s Dad firebomb the barn of someone he believes is sleeping with his wife. The beauty, as ever, is in the first-person narrative, as we see people’s faces and hear the thoughts we don’t want to. It is funny and real and unreal and it is a crying shame that it only gets just over 1 million viewers.

TV comedy review: Extras (series two)

If it wasn’t for the fact that he is rich and happy, you’d almost feel sorry for Ricky Gervais. Having struck gold with The Office, where does he go with his difficult ‘second album’? That he and co-creator/writer/director Stephen Merchant didn’t rest on their laurels and made Extras can only be lauded for their determination and commitment to comedy.

With the second series of Extras released on DVD, it seemed an appropriate time to talk about it. I enjoyed the first series of Extras, with its balance of cringe comedy, the inside look at the making of entertainment and the wonderful show-boating of stars as caricatures of themselves (personal favourites: Kate Winslett 'I'm aching for your big purple-headed womb ferret' and Patrick Stewart ‘All her clothes fall off … and I see everything'). It was funny, which is something a lot of comedies seem to have forgotten how to do recently.

The second series of Extras took a different path from the first series. Here, Andy Millman (Gervais) has been able to get his sitcom, When The Whistle Blows, onto television, with him as the star. However, he has compromised the vision to get it there, so it is more about the catchphrase and a silly wig/glasses combo, leading to a critical mauling but popular success. There are still guest stars, but the dynamic of the first series has shifted a bit, with less of an excuse to see his only real friend, Maggie (Ashley Jensen), and more of a reason to see his rubbish agent, Darren Lamb (Merchant).

One of the aspects that becomes apparent is more of a formula approach to the nature of each show. There are the guest stars for the laugh-out-loud moments (Daniel Radcliffe is hilarious as a boy trying to prove he is grown-up, the wonderful image of him accidentally flicking an unused condom onto Dame Diana Rigg’s head is priceless, and Robert Lindsay makes up for the endless series of My Family with some comedy brilliance in the last episode with the child in hospital) that remind you that this is a funny comedy. Then there are the cringe moments, when stupid things are said and done in that naturalist vein that makes you peek through your fingers because you can’t believe they just happened, mostly by Maggie or Darren. Then there is the meta-commentary about the nature of comedy, as filtered through Andy’s sitcom. All of these happen at the same time, which is quite impressive.

The theatre of embarrassment is something that Gervais and Merchant have mastered, and is still impressive to see done well. However, the second series sees this more and more through Maggie and Darren, making them so unbelievably stupid and unaware of what they are doing that it goes beyond the traditional ‘having a stupid character in a sitcom for them to say funny things’ to making you wonder how they can get out of their own houses without having a fatal accident. You want to bang their heads on the nearest wall to knock some sense into them. They say things that a child with a learning difficulty wouldn’t say, which has the effect of taking you out of the naturalness of the comedy and into the realm of shouting at the screen, ‘That’s fucking ridiculous!’ You stop believing in them as people. I couldn’t believe that Merchant won comedy actor at the British Comedy Awards for it.

The most interesting aspect is the meta-commentary that is going on. Usually, subtext is supposed to be just that: themes underneath the main story. Here, Gervais and Merchant seem to discussing the ideas of comedy and one’s approach to one’s work, the response of an audience to what is supposed to be entertainment and the nature of the creative in needing the respect of peers. It must reflect some of the fights they must had when making The Office, in not watering it down or making it more palatable for a wider audience (remember that it did not get huge ratings, even for BBC2). It also reflects the idea of producing something that the creators must be proud of making, even if it is not a success with the public. People don’t start out to make mediocre comedy, but what is the reaction if it is loved by the general viewing public? My Family is extremely generic, dull and unfunny, with its conveyor belt mentality, yet it is hugely successful in the pre-watershed slot and has been running for many series. Is this suggesting that the majority of people are thick and don’t deserve quality comedy? Are people like Gervais and Merchant doing the right thing by making comedy that will only be appreciated by critics? Are they slagging off all bland comedy with When The Whistle Blows, or just the people who like it? Or are they just exorcising their demons? This is fascinating stuff to be discussing in the middle of a show where David Bowie sings a song taking the piss out of Andy.

Extras, a show that makes you laugh and think at the same time. That’s quite an achievement. And, with the news that they plan to bow out with a Christmas special, like they did with The Office, there’s no worry of the quality being diluted by continuing series.

My Top Five Sitcoms

Tom started this off with his Top Ten Sitcoms (and a bizarre 'No Animation' rule), followed by Dr Sordid with a more-British perspective, and Logan. This was a while ago, admittedly, but, as you can tell if you read my blog regularly, being timely is not my strong point. I've been thinking of changing my sub-heading quote to 'There's No Clock On Criticism!' Not wishing to feel left out when it comes to talking about comedy television programmes, here are my Top Five Sitcoms (I like the High Fidelity aspect of the Top Five concept):

Blackadder
Even though it didn’t really get funny until Blackadder II, the series as a whole is brilliant. For me, the six episodes of the second series are comedy perfection. Rowan Atkinson created a wonderful character, supported by a cast of great people, and it was consistently funny and very good. The historical setting means that it can never date as a sitcom, a problem that can happen to most other sitcoms that are set in their present time, so this will just keep on being wonderful while others may lose their relevance.

The Young Ones
The arrival of The Young Ones onto BBC2 announced to the rest of the country the official introduction to 'alternative' comedy. Anarchic, stupid, silly, but mostly just funny, it was the first time that you felt that a connection in a sitcom, rather than watching the dry farces of before. The second series really got it perfect for the group, with some moments of sublime comedy antics that live with me still. And, of course, they did it right by killing them off in the last show.

Spaced
If The Young Ones was the first sitcom to cause a connection, it was Spaced that spoke directly to its audience. A show about twentysomethings trying to find meaning in their lives, it was the beautiful blend of humour, pop culture references, cinematic camera technique and brilliant characters that struck a chord with the audience, knowing that they were talking and referencing all the things that were important to you. Films, computer games, comic books, sex, drugs, skateboarding, guns, clubbing – Spaced was and will always be geek sitcom of choice.

Alan Patridge
The whole of the Alan Partridge on television (allowing me to include Knowing Me, Knowing You …, as well as the actual sitcom of I’m Alan Partridge) is a creation of comic genius by Steve Coogan (even if Lee & Herring were the first people to come up with the germ of the idea on Radio 4’s On The Hour). Starting off with ripping the shit out of the chat show format, then mining the vein of cringeworthy comedy that would see Ricky Gervais get his Golden Globes later for The Office, Partridge was pure British comedy distilled to perfection. Coogan may worry about Partridge being his legacy, but what a legacy.

Father Ted
The idea of three priests on an island does not sound like a very good situation for comedy to ensue. How wrong. In three deliriously oddball series, Father Ted proved to the perfect setting for comedy and wonderfully grotesque characters. Even though it is set in present time, with the occasional pop culture reference, the setting seems to exist outside of time, allowing it a long life in a similar way to Blackadder. The antics of Fathers Ted, Dougal and Jack, with their housekeeper Mrs Doyle, were spooky in their reality of Ireland and the approach to priests, the truth of which makes it even funnier. It was a shame when Dermot Morgan died so young, but he will always be remembered.

Outside of the Top Five, some close contenders:

The Office
Exquisite in painful laughter, where you were looking through your hands because you couldn’t believe what you were seeing, The Office is quite excellent, perfect in its creation of the real world and the larger-than-life characters that inhabit it. Kudos to Gervais and Marchant for agreeing to keep it short and sweet.

Peep Show
Another sitcom in the vein of excrutiating laughter, Peep Show sees the world literally through the eyes of the two central characters as we see what they see and hear what they are thinking at the time, no matter how embarrassing or horrible it might be. It is like nothing else on television, and brought to the world the talents of David Mitchell and Robert Webb. Hysterical stuff.

Scrubs
I have mentioned British comedy for the most part, and shows that didn’t go on forever. This doesn’t mean I am averse to long-running US sitcoms; even though I haven’t seen enough Seinfeld to be able to put it on this list, the small amount I have seen was superbly written and acted, and made me laugh. I could even occasionally chortle to the well-written lines of Friends and Will & Grace. However, Scrubs is the show that makes me laugh out loud the most consistently of any US show. Not only very funny, it is also very well made, with the single-camera set-up and the flashbacks, asides and fantasy sequences. I know it might be a bit early to put on a list like this, after only four seasons (for us over here) but it is that good.

Frasier
Frasier was the only long-running US sitcom that didn’t just blend into the background, a problem I had with a lot of US shows I have seen. For example, I saw some Everybody Loves Raymond while I lived in the US – a couple of laughs while watching it, perhaps, but nothing memorable to stick in the mind after it was gone. I got the feeling from shows, too many to remember or list, that they were as basic as possible so that they were like televisual wallpaper – you could have it on without being offended enough to turn it off but not engaged enough that you thought about switching over when the adverts came on. Frasier was different, with a wonderfully clever writing team and a sharp cast of actors being razor sharp every week.

Coupling
This is my slightly unusual choice. The first series was above the norm, and the less said about the horrible fourth series the better. However, series two and three were just amazing in their mixture of laughter, emotion and challenging narrative structure, all in half-hour episodes of a traditional sitcom format. The setting up of scenes and jumping in time were brilliant, and, in Richard Coyle as Jeff, one of the most wonderfully perverse yet innocent characters ever created. When he left, so did the heart of the show. But when it was on, it was sheer delight. Ignore the Friends comparison; enjoy the bizarre uniqueness.

Television: Saxondale

Saxondale is the new 7-part series from Steve Coogan, the man behind Alan Partridge. Although he probably doesn’t want that as his epitaph, it will be, as Partridge is one of the great comedy creations, starting out on radio, in On The Hour and Knowing Me, Knowing You …, through the television incarnations. He has created other memorable characters, notably Paul and Pauline Calf, and some not so memorable characters (in Coogan’s Run and, most infamously, Tony Ferrino), but he is very good at what he does, which is inhabiting odd people and making them funny, tragic and real.

It is a surprise, though, to see him back on the small screen in a co-written sitcom. His ventures onto the big screen (the good – A Cock and Bull Story, 24 Hour Party People; the okay – The Parole Officer, Coffee and Cigarettes; and the not so good – Around the World in 80 Days) suggested that film was where his career was heading. I’m not complaining that he has decided to change his mind, because Saxondale is the best new comedy on television this year.

Tommy Saxondale is a former roadie (the non-cliched version, if you read this article from The Guardian), now pest controller, with anger management issues. He has an ex-wife after 20 years of marriage, owns a Mustang, and lives with his new girlfriend, Magz (Ruth Jones, recognisable as the long suffering barmaid, Myfanwy, in Little Britain), who makes rather odd t-shirts. Other characters include the deliberately annoying Vicky (Morwenna Banks), the receptionist who sorts out the work for Tommy, and Raymond (Rasmus Hardiker), who becomes Tommy’s newest assistant, allowing the audience a viewpoint of this new world.

This episode introduces us to the characters well, sets up the world in which they habit, and makes the crucially important job of remembering to be funny. It is not perfect off the bat, much like The IT Crowd but, like that sitcom, the potential is there and the characters are amusing. Saxondale, while having some character traits in common with Partridge, such as the love of cars and the short temper, is a different type, with a sense of humour, some intelligence and is a pro-active participant, rather than just a reactionary character. Some of his lines are hilarious, especially the scene at the end confronting the animal protesters at the pigeon job, meaning that this show is warming up to be the comedy highlight of the summer. (It seems a little odd that the programme is being shown in June, especially with little publicity, but what do I know about marketing a sitcom?) Now, all they have to do is get the wig and beard right from show to show, so it doesn’t look rather odd (as it did in the clip for next week's show).

Dr Who, Feel The Force and some links

Stop hounding me for content, you fiends!

(I wish.)

I couldn’t get to the comic shop this week, because I was donating my kidneys, spleen, pancreas, liver, lungs and heart to poor sick children, or something, so no comic reviews from me today. Go search the lovely blogosphere if that is what your heart desires.

While recovering from impossibly saintly organ donation, I watched the second part of the Cybermen story in Dr Who. This has definitely been the weakest so far: it was stretched to fill two episodes, just so we could have the cool cliffhanger of old; Roger Lloyd-Pack was hamming it something chronic as the villain; the emotional scene between Rose and Mickey at the end was let down by the fact that they can’t act; and the whole thing kept on reminding me of Buffy. I’m not saying that Buffy is the origins of all good fantasy/sci-fi television, but it is certainly the role model for the new Dr Who, in its approach and attitude. The recent story set in the school, which had wonderfully emotive and resonant aspect of the Sarah Jane plot, had a main plot that felt like an unused idea from Buffy. It wasn’t helped by having Anthony Head in it. Then, the Cybermen story felt like it was a two-episode attempt to justify Mickey in the vein of the Zeppo episode of Buffy, where Xander finds some self-respect among the people with powers. Ah well, hope they have something better next week.

Talking about television, I meant to mention Feel The Force.

I try to sample new British comedy. Sometimes it is good, sometimes it is poor. And sometimes it is rubbish, like BBC2’s Feel The Force, about two inept women in the police. It makes The Thin Blue Line look like a work of genius.

Michelle Gomez from Green Wing and 'I. Want. A. Fucking. Baby!' woman from ManStrokeWoman are the two crap coppers in question. The former wants to be a good cop but isn’t, while the latter is genuinely useless and is looking for a man. Together they are a comedy black hole, sucking in the laughter and making you feel slightly sad.

I have to confess to laughing once, but it was a fart joke, and I am a heterosexual man, so it’s genetic that I find that funny.

The BBC must be rather desperate if they produced this drivel, just because it was written by a former writer from the Smack The Pony team, who has turned a sketch into a 30-minute sitcom by chucking in the hilarity of murdered people. Flimsy would be a compliment.

The most memorable thing about the whole venture? The theme song. 'Whoo oo oo ooo Can you feel the force?' I couldn’t get the bloody tune out of my head for a week …

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Finally, some link dumping.

I can’t believe there is going to be a Public Enemy comic. The revolution will not be televised, it will be represented in four colours and grids. Hopefully, it will have a whole lot of Flava, booooyyyyyyyy

I’ve never tried the darling of the blogosphere, Scott Pilgrim, so I can enjoy a free comic at Newsarama. I haven’t made up my mind about it, but it looks okay.

Inspired by Andrew Wheeler’s post about the top 50 Marvel characters, the Great Curve are going for the top 50 DC characters, with other bloggers getting in on the act. Sounds interesting, even though I am not sufficiently geeky to be able to join in, being an infrequent visitor to the DCU. Still, I look forward to the result.

Green Wing – series 2, episode 1

Green Wing was a breath of fresh air on Channel 4 last year. Inventive, surreal, visually distinctive, populated with great comedy actors, backed by good writers, and experimenting by doing comedy in an hour-long show, rather than taking the easy route of 30 minutes of jokes. Most importantly, it was very, very funny.

It was with great anticipation that I was looking forward to last Friday at 9pm, for the first show in the second series, despite the fact that they have been promoting the show with ads for at least a month, if not longer, telling us it was 'nearly ready'. There hasn't been any great new, British comedy in a while on terrestrial television and, with the promise of having learnt a lot from the first series, the second series would be even better.

What we got were smiles, chuckles, the occasional guffaw, but not consistent laughs. Following on from the end of the (literal) cliffhanger at the end of the first series, where Mac (Julian Rhind-Tutt), Guy (Stephen Mangan) and Martin (Karl Theobald) were left dangling in an ambulance over the edge of a cliff after Guy found out he had slept with his mother, Joanna (Pippa Haywood), we eventually discover that Mac is in a coma. (His coma provides some nice chuckles, especially the Take That and Kraftwerk bits, when his brain takes something from the outside, but not more.) Caroline (Tamsin Grieg) is pining for him after they revealed their feelings for each other, while Sue (Michelle Gomez), the maniacal staff liaison officer with a crush on Mac, tries her best to come between them. Meanwhile, Alan (Mark Heap) still suffers the tricks of Boyce (Oliver Chris), exacerbated by his dumping by Joanna.

There is the usual visual mischief from the cameras, some nice slapstick and wonderfully bizarre moments (Guy threatening to shoot a cute kitten in order to get Mac to wake up from his coma), but it didn't add up to the genius that was the first series. Not that the first series was brilliant all the way through; there were times that the experiment didn't work, but not for want of trying. I don't know if it was trying too hard to tell a story this time, whereas the first series let the gags find their own feet, as the actors were allowed to improvise, but this seemed to force a structure on the show that didn't permit the range for tomfoolery. When actors did try to riff, it didn't quite work.

I really wanted this to be brilliant, which probably didn't help in the enjoyment, but it didn't achieve it. Still a lot better than most, but needs some work.

[EDIT: Turns out not many people watched the first episode, according to this piece. Not a confidence-inspiring start.]

Television: The IT Crowd

There has been much talk about the death of the studio-based sitcom in the UK of late (there have been two programmes on it in recent weeks), after the success of The Office and The Thick Of It, with their documentary styles. So The IT Crowd hits our television sets with a strange mood around it, seeing as it is heralded as a traditional, studio-based sitcom. This feeling is amplified by the fact that it comes from Graham Linehan, the co-creator and co-writer of Father Ted and Black Books.

Set in the IT department of a large company, we are introduced to Roy (Chris O'Dowd) and Moss (Richard Ayoade), the only denizens of the dank basement office that looks after all the computers. Roy is the more socially aware, while Moss it the more traditional geek, with his short-sleeved shirt tucked into his high-belted trousers, bad hair and thick glasses. The company boss, played in full over-the-top mode by comedy god Chris Morris, with more than a little pinch of CJ from The Rise and Fall of Reggie Perrin, appoints them a new manager, Jen (Katherine Parkinson), who knows practically nothing about computers. Hilarity ensues.

Well, not exactly. Even though there are some laughs ('Have you tried turning it off and on?') and the characters are fully realised (as you would expect from Linehan), it is not laugh-out-loud funny stuff, which is the crucial factor. The first episode had some moments, but it was mostly set-up. The second show starts off with some inspired surrealism, with an advert for the ridiculously long new emergency phone number, 0118 999 881 999 119 7253, and has some mangled toes for slapstick, but there is not the sustained and immediate brilliance of Linehan's previous work.

I think that this show has some potential, but it isn't hilarious and isn't must-see television, which is a shame. It is better than, say, Hyperdrive, and shows that there is good comedy out there, but I don't think that it has resurrected the studio sitcom yet.

British television comedy: a year in review

I felt the urge to talk about British television comedy for a bit after seeing a trio of shows: The Thick of It, Hyperdrive and Tittybangbang. The Thick of It is extremely sharp political satire, first shown on BBC 4 and now making it to BBC 2, masterminded by Armando Iannucci, a man who was part of The Day Today and Alan Partridge. Shot in documentary style, it looks behind the scenes of a junior minister and the government spin doctor who really runs things. It is quite brilliant and hilarious. Hyperdrive is a sci-fi comedy on BBC 2, starring Nick Frost (Mike from Spaced) and Kevin Eldon. This show has the shadow of Red Dwarf looming ominously over it, and never manages to peak its head out. Although very modern looking, it feels influenced by The Office, and suffers from not being very funny, even if it's nice to see Frost in a lead role.

Tittybangbang is a woeful sketch show on BBC 3 that has a female cast doing sub-Little Britain material. I watched the first show and didn't laugh once. This is not a good sign. I'm not saying that Little Britain is the gold standard of sketch shows, as it isn't (personally I feel that the quality has suffered due to the popularity of the show, and they have rushed characters out that aren't as funny and rely solely on 'shocking' the safe audience of BBC1. Series 1 was based on the radio version of the show, with the characters and gags tested out before making the transition to television, thereby bringing fully formed and funny sketches straight to screen.) but, at the very least, a sketch show should make you laugh. The only salvation is the form of Lucy Montgomery, who seems to be a very good comedy character actor, even if the material is very weak.

These three shows got me thinking about the recent year of British television comedy, so here's my run down of shows that tried to make me laugh last year.

Sitcoms

Peep Show (Channel 4) had its third series last year, and it was a blistering return to the brilliance of series one, after a slight dip in the laugh quality of series two. Definitely one of the best comedies on television, as the quote accompanying the poster ads from Ricky Gervais attests. Like Thick of it, it has a unique style (getting inside the minds of the characters) and a commitment to making people laugh. Very, very funny.

Nathan Barley (Channel 4) was a patchy affair that had moments of brilliance, interspersed with too much of the anguish comedy of The Office. A fantastic creation from Charlie Brooker, writer of hysterical television reviews in the Guardian's Guide supplement, and co-written by the comedy genius that is Chris Morris, it poked fun at the trendy world of media types in the Hoxton area. The programme was filled with bits that realised the world perfectly, but the main thrust of the storylines left me (and apparently the audience, as dwindling viewing figures showed) cold and lacking in laughs.

The Robinsons was a gentle but enjoyable series on BBC 2, starring Martin Freeman as an everyman chap, called Ed Robinson, and his bizarre family. They weren't 'wacky' or 'zany' but that very British eccentric oddness that this country seems to produce in quantity. Freeman is a good comedy actor, with the sort of face that elicits laughter and sympathy, and the series progressed nicely without being earth-shattering.

The big name sitcom of the year was BBC 2's Extras, the first episode I reviewed here. Ricky Gervais & Stephen Marchant followed up The Office with a look at the life of the extra, with much of the same comedy of embarrassment, mixed with star names. The star names provided some highlights (Patrick Stewart wanting to do a project where he was able to telekinetically remove the clothes of women, Les Dennis able to mock his life, and Kate Winlset savaging her 'nice' image) and the laughs through your fingers were equally painful and funny. The series didn't hit classic status due to the insular nature of the situation – while The Office was universal, Extras was quite insular, stopping it from reaching across different levels.

Smoking Room was a BBC 3 comedy that, as the title suggests, is based entirely in the smoking room of an office-based company. The scope for situations were, therefore, extremely limited and the humour is all talk-based, but the laughs were present and the characters strong, particularly Robert Webb from Peep Show. Another low-key show was Sensitive Skin on BBC 2, which I include here only because I don't know where to put it. Joanna Lumley and Denis Lawson are a couple in their late 50s, wondering what they've done with their lives, with Joanna having conversations with aspects of her conscience in the form of memory-inspired characters. Bridging comedy and drama, there was a quiet poetry to this programme, and I'm angry to have missed the last one. Another strong show was Absolute Power on BBC 2, set in the world of spin doctoring, with Stephen Fry. Boasting strong scripts from people in the know, and a good ensemble cast, this was a joy to watch and see them playing off well-known incidents and celebrities.

BBC didn't have it all their way in the comedy stakes. They produced some rubbish. I won't talk about My Family, as I have only seen five very poor minutes of this show-by-committee, a process that works in the US but not here. However, there were others. From the same stable was According to Bex, starring Jessica Stevenson from Spaced, which I reviewed here. It was criminal to see her talents wasted on such dross. Ben Elton produced a new sitcom, Blessed, about a couple with a new baby. The man who brought us The Young Ones and Blackadder II (one of the greatest sitcoms ever) has matured into an unfunny old man, producing not so much a sitcom, rather an excuse for the lead male, Ardal Hanlon, to vent Elton's stand-up bits, which sounds so forced and horrible in the dialogue of a sitcom. Worst Week of My Life was traditional British farce that was desperately unfunny. I couldn't watch more than one episode of this predictable and pedestrian mainstream comedy without wincing and shaking my head in shame. So I stopped.

A disappointment was Catterick, the series from Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer making its debut on BBC 2 after debuting on BBC 3, which tried to infuse their funny weirdness into the sitcom format, in the form of a road trip. The characters were suitably bizarre and well-acted (from the likes of Reece Shearsmith and Matt Lucas) but it didn't really work. It seemed stretched from a movie into a six-episode series, and didn't have enough to hold the whole together. That said, it had one of the funniest images, when Matt Lucas' character asked his wife to pull his finger, in imitation of the notorious joke, only for him to produce a stool instead, the shape of which we could see travel down the inside of his trousers. Other poor attempts, hardly worth mentioning, are BBC 3's Ideal, with the irritating Johnny Vegas as a comedy drug dealer, and Channel 4's A Bear's Tail, a puerile spin-off from the improbably successful (even-though-it-hasn't-been-funny-since-series-one) Bo' Selecta, following the antics of the titular Bear character, dragging down Sean Pertwee, Patsy Kensit and Davina MacCall with them.

However, the award for worst sitcom goes to Meet the Magoons, from Channel 4. This was about Scottish Asians running a curry house in Glasgow and was below the level of a sixth-form revue. It was painful to watch. I couldn't believe that this had got past the stage of a script review, as it was complete rubbish. How the channel that could bring us Peep Show and Green Wing could dump this turd on our screen is beyond me.


Sketch Shows

Spoons was a mostly successful sketch show on Channel 4, coming from the guiding hand of Charlie Brooker, about modern life for the twenty-something couple. Highlight characters included the man who found himself trapped in a relationship and tries to escape with the help of complete strangers, and the woman who replies to he boyfriends requests, 'I. Want. A. Fucking. Baby.' Some of the recurring sketches wore a little thin, but they mostly hit the mark, and tapped a rich vein of humour that particularly appealed to me. On a similar theme was BBC 3’s Manstrokewoman, a sketch show with a similar look at modern couples, and included Nick Frost in the troop of actors. Some of the recurring characters weren’t as strong, such as the woman who always tries bizarre new fashions, much to her boyfriends bemusement, and ends up by saying, 'You couldn’t just say I looked nice.' Both of these sketch shows were well shot and had a good ensemble cast, making you believe the skits.

A bit more slapdash was ITV’s Monkey Trousers, coming from the minds of Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer, with a wealth of big name comedy talent, such as Steve Coogan. This was an attempt from ITV to get its name onto the comedy stage by throwing lots of money to get named comedy actors (including Alastair McGowan, Ronnie Ancona, Richard Wilson, David Walliams and Matt Lucas) to perform in a very mixed selection of bizarre sketches, definitely more miss than hit. The only worthwhile character was the creepy toy shop owner, played by Steve Coogan; even the bizarreness of Vic Reeves playing a police negotiator who talks gibberish (the only discernible words being ‘Monkey Trousers’) couldn’t help.

Talking of sketch shows cannot go without mentioning Little Britain, the current Chelsea FC of sketch shows. However, I don’t want to talk about it much because I don’t think it’s funny anymore; despite the popularity (it was one of last year’s top ten watched programmes) and the catchphrase ubiquity in playgrounds throughout the nation, the show has not been even vaguely amusing in the third series, using shock and willing celebrity appearances to ride the wave of viewing figures. So I’ll move on.

Even less funny, although not as popular, is the Catherine Tate Show. Despite the staggering popularity of one character (the 'Am I bovered?' teenage girl), this show is torturous to watch. Tate is a great comedy character performer, inhabiting all her grating characters fully, but forgetting that the point is to make people laugh, rather than show off how good she is at creating new people. Although I admit that the swearing granny can raise a smile, it quickly lost repeat value, and nothing can make up for the agonisingly awful laughing couple who find the inane anecdotes they tell each other impossibly funny – if I saw those people in real life, I would strangle them. I cannot fathom how this show is allowed to continue, let alone get a second series.


Missed shows

Try as I might, I cannot possibly see everything. I completely missed out Help on BBC 2, with Chris Langham playing a psychotherapist to the many characters of the excellent Paul Whitehouse. I didn’t watch anymore Keith Barrett Show, as I found the first one to be a Alan Partridge affair with celebrities, and a rather lame vehicle for Rob Brydon’s talents. I couldn’t be bothered to keep up with BBC 3's The Mighty Boosh and its student antics. Despite liking Brydon, I didn’t laugh at Supernova in the fifteen minutes I saw on BBC 2, so didn’t come back for seconds. Carrie and Barry wasn’t on my radar, as Neil Morrissey is not funny to watch as a main character. I saw some of the Channel 5 sketch show, Singles, which was quite funny, but never saw anything after that to comment fairly on it. If there is anything I have missed, I apologise for not being diligent enough in my efforts and hope you can forgive me.


The final question, therefore, is the much-asked, 'Is the sitcom dead?' I think not, although you might not think so from my review. British television can still bring out some brilliant comedy, even when producing dross, and it also comes down to taste; why is Little Britain so popular again? There is a new series of Green Wing coming our way, which will bring the laughs in abundance if the first series is any indication. Robert Webb and David Mitchell, the stars of Peep Show, will be bringing their radio sketch show, The Mitchell & Webb Experience, to BBC 2 later this year, and BBC radios 2 and 4 are constantly trying out new comedians and ideas. And we have The IT Crowd, the new sitcom from Graham Linehan, one of the men behind Father Ted and Black Books, which looks like it will be one to watch. And there is always some excellent comedy from the US to take up the slack; Scrubs is a continual hilarious delight, and Arrested Development was very enjoyable, despite the lack of commitment from BBC 2 in keeping it to a regular schedule, and My Name Is Earl is shaping up to be very enjoyable (I have yet to see Curb Your Enthusiasm, much to my chagrin, but it should be included here.) The future isn’t as bleak as some nay-sayers would have you believe. And I always have my personal three favourite sitcoms on DVD to watch: Spaced, Blackadder and The Young Ones.

TV: Extras

Some people might think that it is strange that I am posting a review of a comedy programme the day after the second London attack. That is their right. For me, I was born, bred and live in London, and these cowardly attacks on this wonderful city anger me beyond belief. But I will not change my routine because of them. I will not let them dictate my life. Yes, I had to get the train because the tubes are disrupted but I’m a Londoner; I’m used to it. It meant that I had to go on a 'bendy bus' for the first time, even though they were taken out of service for a while because they caught on fire, but I’m still going to work, still getting on with life, and still want to post to my blog about the new comedy from Ricky Gervais because that’s the kind of stubborn pillock I am.

What better way to diminish the impact of terrorists than comedy? Laughter will make the world seem better. Not forever, but it does help. Which was a theme touched on in the programme itself. Extras is about Andy Millman (Gervais), a man who gave up a good job in a bank to become an actor. Except that, in the five years he’s been trying, he hasn’t had a single line and gets work as an extra. His friend in this venture is Maggie (newcomer Ashley Jensen), and we find them for the first time on the set of a film about the Balkan conflict, directed by Ben Stiller, playing an over-the-top version of himself.

It is in his speech explaining why they are making the film that mentions comedy and world issues. After reeling off some of the weekend and world grosses of his films, he asks what can he do if he were to find an orphan in a war zone? Put on a DVD of Dodgeball? Well, yes, he’ll laugh for and hour and 32 minutes but what then? He’s still an orphan. Well, he could watch it again, and he’d laugh again because he’d find things he hadn’t seen the first time, it’s layered, we made it like that, but what next? After the fifth, six, seventh viewing, he’d still be laughing but, you know … This is very funny and dark as well, which is what Gervais and Merchant do so well, and Stiller is very game for undermining his public persona.

The rest of the programme is taken up with Andy trying to get a line in the film by whatever means possible, including pretending to befriend the author of the screenplay, who has written about his experiences of the war, including the death of his wife and child, and even stooping as low as to bribe him. This is dark stuff, examining the vacuous and unthinking nature of people who will do anything to be famous and it’s a little strange seeing it in a more ‘normal’ television style than the hyper-realism of The Office, which created the space in which this more cringing comedy could work more naturally.

This is kept up in a later section at a party where Maggie is completely flustered upon discovering that the object of her affections has to wear an orthopaedic shoe due to having one leg shorter than the other, ejaculating 'clumpy' and 'Herman Munster' without even realising it. This scene reminds you of the scenes in The Office where you would be hiding behind your hands because you couldn’t believe what you were seeing at the same time as laughing. Maggie seems to be even more stupid and socially-inept than David Brent, if that’s possible, whereas Andy is more worldly wise than Brent, and with a better sense of humour, even if they have a similar sense of self-delusion.

The funniest part comes at the end. After Stiller has said the most unbelievable line to the writer in front of the cast and crew ('Stop going on about your fucking dead wife!'), Maggie and Andy try to say something, only for Stiller’s ego to kick in. The dialogue:

Stiller to Andy: Who are you?
Andy: Nobody.
Stiller: Do you know who I am?
Andy: Starsky or Hutch, I can never remember.
Stiller: Is that supposed to be funny?
Andy: You were in it, you tell me.

This is very dark and very funny. It occupies a different territory to The Office, but on similar grounds, and I hope that people give it a chance and not just expect a sequel to The Office. It is intelligent and daring (the Balkan conflict as a source of comedy, anyone?) and for that we must applaud Gervais and Merchant for doing something they believe in, instead of going for an easy option. I eagerly await future episodes.

Must. Get. Thoughts. Out. Of . Head.

My brain seems to have recovered since yesterday, although not enough last night to actually be able to read my comics haul, so reviews will come later.

But my brain is overcompensating by floating all around the place, so this post will digress. You have been warned.

I watched Teen Wolf on the weekend. I didn't go out of my way to; it was on television and I haven't seen it since I first saw it nearly 20 years ago, and I didn't want to watch anything specific while I concentrated on something else. Time is a strange thing, isn't it? The first half of the film is quite enjoyable, as Fox discovers the wolf aspect but, once he does, it's quite dire, with all that hideous 'Being True To Yourself' nonsense and excessive soft rock music to tell you exactly what emotion you are supposed to be feeling in the film at that moment.

And what sort of party with alcohol has arranged party games with the annoying Stiles dictating the juvenile fun? Ever so slightly embarrassing, especially for the writers, one of whom is Jeph Loeb, writer of many a comic book and consulting producer on Smallville. (An aside; how did he go from Joseph Loeb III to Jeph Loeb? Was it after Commando? Did his typewriter break?) The unintentionally funny scene was where the obvious body double for the 'hot' girl is removing her bra to seduce Fox in the changing rooms. All I could think of when I saw that scene was the line by Natalie Portman in Garden State when Large is being humped by the dog, 'Uh-oh, here comes the lipstick.' Come on, I'm not the only person to wonder if the wolf thing is confined to the hands and face ...

(It was also weird seeing the husband of Lynette in Desperate Housewives as Brad, one of the players on Fox's team – his name is Doug Savant, which I had to look up, obviously. Thanks, IMDB.)

In the world of television comedy, the BBC is showing The Two Ronnies again. The two chaps are both in their seventies but still the BBC will use them to get ratings, which is quite sad. I have warm memories of their show from a kid (I must have been around 12 or so when I last found it funny) with Ronnie Barker's talent for word play and the silly sketches (like the Mastermind sketch where the speciality is answering the question before last) even though, even then, I knew that Corbett's monologues were rubbish. They are mostly showing the old sketches, with some new linking material, but it still managed to pull in over 8 million viewers, which goes to show that people prefer wallowing in the warm, fuzzy feeling of nostalgia than finding something funny.

Talking of which, Ricky Gervais shows class {EDIT: link no longer works to Chortle news] by not taking the BBC 'golden handcuff' deal and retaining creative freedom for his new show, Extras. Turning down £5 million just so he can be proud of his work is quite something and my respect for him increases, even beyond the fact that The Office did so well in the States and he's not afraid to speak his mind. This at a time when the Americanized version is soon to air, as reviews like this discuss. I still think it is a strange idea, but that never stopped people doing whatever the hell they wanted to do.

In the blogosphere, Marc-Oliver quotes something I wrote, which is a rather lovely thing to do, so thanks for that. Check out his review site, Supercritical, which is very well written and has similar views to myself, only he expresses himself much better than I.

Finally, Harvey has the real deal on what happened to Malibu from the horse's mouth, which also goes to show that blogs can achieve something positive.

Edit: The BBC deny they offered Ricky Gervais a £5 million 'golden handcuff' deal.

Comedy: More Peep Show To Come

Excuse the awful pun in the title.

Chortle reports that Channel 4 has reordered a new series of Peep Show, which is very good news. Peep Show is one of the under-rated gems on Channel 4, winning awards and critical acclaim but not the ratings. I think the reason for this is the cringing proximity to reality that the comedy is based upon, which can be too intense for some, like my girlfriend for example, where the awfulness of the situation can make you sick to your stomach. However, it is very, very funny.

Peep Show is about Mark and Jeremy (played by Robert Webb, who you may recognise from The Smoking Room, and David Mitchell, who are about to have another series of their own comedy show on Radio 4 this week, starting Thursday), who live together for no other reason than they shared a room at university. Mark is uptight and works in an office and is very sad; Jeremy is a wannabe pop star with no talent. The magic ingredient to this sitcom is that we can hear the thoughts of the two lead characters, no matter how inane, disgusting or stupid they may be.

Tapping into the same vein of 'theatre-of-embarrassment' as I'm Alan Partridge and The Office, this show is both excrutiating and hilarious simultaneously, as you watch through your fingers and laugh in the same moment. The first series in particular was the perfect blend of this mix, something that I don't think they quite achieved in the second series, with more emphasis on the cringe than the comedy. Hopefully, the third series will bring back the laughs to the forefront and that the viewing public will recognise the dark genius of the show.

Comedy: According to Bex

It's not just me who doesn't like BBC1's Friday prime time comedy, According to Bex; this Chortle item reveals diminishing viewers. This is a shame for one notable reason: Jessica Stevenson.

One half of Spaced, the greatest sitcom ever, Jess is presumably going for a mainstream audience (seeing as the film route taken by her co-conspirator, Simon Pegg, with Shaun of the Dead, isn't as readily available to her, such is the unfortunate male-domination of the film industry) and good luck to her. She is funny, smart and deserves all the good things that are coming to her.

Only, According to Bex isn't going to do it, because it fails at the one thing comedy shouldn't: it isn't funny. Jess plays Rebecca, aka Bex, a PA for some poorly defined media-type company. She has a boyfriend, a sex-mad Dad, rubbish bosses and does occasional straight-to-camera bits, but as separate bits from the rest of the show. Jess is good, but it doesn't look like she's trying, as if she realises it's not that good.

According to Bex is another British experiment of the American style of sitcom, i.e. there are a lot of writers working on the show. Now, I'm not going to say that all British comedy is good and American comedy is rubbish because that's just bollocks. There is excellent American comedy by teams (The Simpsons, Seinfeld, Frasier) and there is rubbish British comedy by individuals (Last of the Summer Wine and Keeping Up Appearances, both by Roy Clarke, just as an example). Also, the best British comedy of the last few months, maybe even year, Green Wing, had a team of writers, so the issue isn't black and white. However, the comedy-by-committee approach on BBC1 doesn't give that particular brand of Britishness that makes a comedy great. And is why According to Bex isn't funny.

They try hard but it borders on the painful sometimes. The canned laughter sounds particularly bad, which doesn't help. There is the odd good line, and Jess has some nice delivery, but if you don't laugh properly in 30 minutes, you're in trouble. It doesn't help having Greg Wise hamming it up for no good reason as Bex's boss, nor the flat delivery of supposedly funny lines by Zita Sattar, who plays Bex's friend Jan.

I don't understand why someone like Jess, who obviously knows good writing from Spaced (or Clive Russell, who plays bland boyfriend Jack, who was is in Green Wing) doesn't have some sort of say in if something is funny. I've watched two episodes now, which is probably more than the rest of the country, and I didn't laugh. I think I might have smiled once, but it was getting rather sad towards the end of the second show, desperately wanting them to make me laugh.

The show is being tested for six episodes, but I can't see it getting another series, the only plus being that at least Jessica can go off and do something that people will want to remember her for. It's telling that, in all preview blurbs by papers and magazines prior to the show starting, people were saying how much they loved Jessica Stevenson and how little they liked the show but were willing to forgive her doing it. Good luck with the future, Jessica; I hope that the right vehicle comes along.

Comedy: Chris Morris profile

Some Chris Morris news in this Observer profile.

Chris Morris is a modern comedy god, from radio's On The Hour, television's The Day Today (a news parody so accurately scary and prophetic, I can no longer watch news programmes seriously) and the infamous Brass Eye, and now he's going to be bringing us a sitcom, for which the world should be grateful.

For more information, try the excellent Glebe's Thrift Funnel, or this Wikipedia entry for a quick fact felch, or you can listen to the genius of the man at the excellent Cook'd and Bomb'd website, which has lots of wonderful stuff for the discerning fan.

Update: Walking to the tube, I saw a poster for what looked like a new mobile phone, with a catch-quote of "It's well weapon". I was scared that this was for a genuine product. Fortunately, it was not; it's a parody ad for the new sitcom, Nathan Barley, co-written by Chris Morris. You can see the ad in full here, which is just one of many things on the site from the series which looks to be great. (Thanks to Londonist for that.)