TV comedy round-up
David O'Toole gives us a run-down on the highs and lows of comedy on television so far this year.
In January the TV was awash with new comedy series, so February marked the end of many of them. This is because comedy writers in Britain are held in such high regard, and their talents are so sought after, that making them write more than six episodes would be milking their talents. Imagine someone saying to Di Vinci: "by the way, when you’ve finished that ceiling there’s a nice drink in it for you if you paint the kitchen and clear out the shed." Of course they didn’t, artistic talent is a precious thing and we should be careful not to spread it thin. Except it’s not like that everywhere.
Without getting into the debate about which country produces the best sit-coms, there’s no denying that when the American’s get it right they get it right in a big way. The new series of Friends now brightens our Thursday evenings courtesy of Sky One and so far every episode has had a good handful of laugh out loud moments, which if managed in an entire run of an English sit-com will merit a Christmas Special. In America, the attitude seems to be that if you put it about that you’re a comedy writer then you should be able to write something funny all the time: that’s your job, stupid. English writers are given much more time to get it right, to experiment, to let their characters develop - the pat example being Only Fools and Horses, which didn’t go down too well at first.
The case in point this year is The Creatives, a programme so incredibly unfunny, really jaw-droppingly poor, that the BBC dubbed it with the most muted canned laughter track I have ever heard. They seemed to be trying to tell us that the programme wasn’t actually meant to be funny, but gently satirical/wry/blah and so we shouldn’t expect to laugh too much, or, indeed, at all. What makes this all the worse is that this is the second series of The Creatives, the first one being the worse comedy of whichever year it first aired (perhaps I should know, but I don’t). Also, other than it’s overall standard of comedy, the second series bares no resemblance to the first. The worst thing about the transformation is that everything changed but the two writers and ‘stars’ and it was their fault it so bad in the first place. I’d like to see Docherty and Hunter ply their trade in the States. "Hey you two Scotch guys! I don’t know what passes for comedy in Edin-frigging-burrow, but in this country we like our sit-coms to be amusing!" The producers would say, in exactly that fashion, because that’s how Americans speak. "Get out of here you bums!"
On the other hand, I don’t think The League of Gentlemen could produce twenty-six episodes on the trot and would we want them to? Now this is the kind of programme that we are good at in Britain. Highly original and lavishly produced, The League has had more money chucked at it then Channel 5 spends on comedy in a year. It’s not always funny, some of it’s too dark for that, but when it is nothing on telly matches it. Six episodes of this were all we needed and probably all The League could make without going round the twist. Anymore and we all would have had nose bleeds.
The battle for audiences for comedy is a battle fought mostly between the BBC and Channel 4 (of which more later). While BBC2 can experiment a bit and be daring, but the boys at the helm of BBC1 are looking for a more sure-fire hit and have turned, as they often do, to an established writer to produce one for them. Beast, by Simon Nye, the sit-com about a vet who doesn’t like animals, or being a vet, or anything very much, started slowly, but grew in statue as the series reached it’s end. It’s not a classic yet, but then who remembers the first series of Men Behaving Badly? (Which, you may remember, starred Harry Enfield, who acted so woodenly you could have rubbed his balls together to start a fire.)
Channel 4 have had two noticeable series this year, one plugged left, right and centre, the other slipped quietly into the schedule as if we weren’t meant to notice it. Trigger Happy TV was a modern day Candid Camera without the voiceover explaining to the audience at home, who are stupid, the elaborate set-ups. THTV relied on tomfoolery, jolly-japes and public displays of stupidity to make us laugh. Well, sometimes it did and sometimes it didn’t, which is in keeping with the nature of the show, this kind of thing being inherently hit and miss, relying as it does on the reaction of Joe Public, and we all know how fickle he is.
The other Channel 4 show that may have caught your eye, if it’s a sharp one, was That Peter Kaye Thing, which was on Wednesday nights after a repeat of Smack The Pony, which couldn’t have been good for it’s profile. Viewers must have thought, "this show must be bad. It’s on after Smack The Pony and that’s rubbish." Which would be a shame because Peter Kaye is one of the funniest turns on telly and his series of mockumentaries was so uncannily accurate that viewers who didn’t know the set-up would surely have believed that it was real. Sometimes the programme ran aground on it’s quest for authenticity because Kaye wouldn’t go for the big laughs if they were out of keeping with the style of documentary he was trying to pull the piss out off. The Ice cream Man Cometh is recommended when the repeats are on.
Well, that’s some of the comedy that we’ve been offered this year. If there was any on Channel 5 I didn’t see it as I refuse to watch anything that channel labels ‘comedy’ after they foisted We Know Where You Live on us, a show so lacking in laughs and so lazily written that it made The Creatives seem like Seinfield. Or maybe it made it look like Goodnight Sweetheart, something in that league. Blimey, bring back Reggie Perrin, that’s what I say! Oh, they have. |
I don’t think The League of Gentlemen could produce twenty-six episodes on the trot and would we want them to?
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