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March 29, 2024, 12:06:04 AM

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Go and See The Armando Iannucci Show

Started by 5 Knuckle Shuffle, March 08, 2004, 11:43:28 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

Bellscab

QuoteLooks like I haven't been chosen to be part of the audience.

Me neither. And I was pretty quick in ordering my tickets. Nazis. I hope the scum that won tickets enjoy them.

I guess I'll just have to have a quiet one in with a tub of lube, a box of wipes and a stack of Country Life.

Jemble Fred

Appropos of fucking fuck-all, you might be interested to know that the co-driver voice in Richard Burns Rally for the Xbox sounds disturbingly like Armando Iannucci. That's no reason to ever play a videogame, I'm just saying.

Purple Tentacle

Quote from: "Jemble Fred"Appropos of fucking fuck-all, you might be interested to know that the co-driver voice in Richard Burns Rally for the Xbox sounds disturbingly like Armando Iannucci. That's no reason to ever play a videogame, I'm just saying.

I remain convinced that the late Bob Monkhouse lent his voice as the commentator on International Superstar Soccer 1 on the SNES

Jemble Fred

Quote from: "Purple Tentacle"
Quote from: "Jemble Fred"Appropos of fucking fuck-all, you might be interested to know that the co-driver voice in Richard Burns Rally for the Xbox sounds disturbingly like Armando Iannucci. That's no reason to ever play a videogame, I'm just saying.

I remain convinced that the late Bob Monkhouse lent his voice as the commentator on International Superstar Soccer 1 on the SNES

As it goes, Bob was a big videogames fan, and once went into the magazine office in Bournemouth where my brother was working to get some cheats for the SNES. Aswad turned up once as well.

Macerate and Petrify

I'll be wearing a leather trenchcoat and carrying a bag of some kind. Wave/say hello to me (at your own risk). Give me a cigarette and i'm yours for the night, big boy.

butnut

I'm the blond with the huge breasts, and I'll be more than happy to talk about butts and/or nuts.

Macerate and Petrify

Well i'm back, my minidisc didnt work though so no grab. I actually shouted at it on the train due to this.

I'll do a full in depth report tommorrow, but suffice to say it was 2 and a half hours of excellence.

Velodrome!

Emergency Lalla Ward Ten

Fucking hell, that was fucking awful.

It was 'What Happened There?', a panel game featuring four Polyfilla comedy-whore no-marks (Dan Gaster, Lucy Porter, Jimmy Carr and Jon Oliver) doing tenth-rate Iannucci-lite twaddle while sat at desks. All done in That Voice, with That Inflexion, complete with That Gesture afterwards (the 'Sorry, I know that was a crap gag, have I gone too far?' mugging that Oliver learnt from his I'm Alan Partridge videos). It was really, *really* bad.

I mean, Jimmy Carr and Jon Oliver. What the fuck is Armando doing hanging out with them? Their greasy, faux-aloof, 'Oh, I appear to be working in the comedy industry, errrrrrm...' sunken-eyed faces and pisspoor funny-TV-programme-title material ('What about Celebrity Cucumber Relocation?! Errrrrm...').

And people were pissing themselves! Like it was fucking Duck Soup or something.

I'm off to bed.

butnut

Ok, here's my take on it. I was alarmed when I walked in the venue and saw the topical panel game seating. For some reason, it hadn't occured to me that Iannucci would be doing this. I assumed it would be nearer the TV shows, or something totally new.

Seeing Armando in the flesh was a revelation, and my favourite bits were his off-hand introductory bits. He should be a stand-up, as he's just a naturally funny guy. He was really good at working an audience.

However, my heart sank when the panel came on. Lucy Porter was terrible, and had to re-do a load of her lines at the end, and they still weren't funny. Dan Gaster seemed to have no comedic ideas at all, and would just take what ever anyone else was saying and develop it in a fairly unfunny and unoriginal way, just like you or I would in a pub.

I found Jon Oliver (for some reason I thought it was Jon Holmes - does he exist?) and Jimmy Carr funnier than I expected, but then my expectations were pretty low. The Jon guy seemed to derive most of his humour from just taking an idea as far as possible - i.e the stuff on Priests, and the way he kept saying that Kevin Spacey was not 'a gay' annoyed me greatly.

Having said all this, I did enjoy myself,  but maybe because Iannucci read out my word at the end. (For those not there, everyone in the audience submitted a single word on a piece of card. The guests were then meant to create new programme ideas out of these random snipets. My word was wired.) Or maybe it was just being in the same room as Iannucci. However, it did go on for 2 and 1/2 hours (way too long) and it got fucking boiling in there. I thought I was coming down with flu.

I think that Emergency Lalla Ward Ten asks a very important question when he says 'What is Iannucci doing hanging around these guys?' and the only excusable answer is that they're the only ones who would do a pilot. Maybe, if the series gets a commission, then they'll get better people. I was also surprised at the number of co-writers in the credits.

I'm now really hoping that it doesn't get commissioned and that IA will try and create something that isn't a topical quiz show.

Darrell

Oh fucking hell, this sounds disastrous. If it gets a transmission/commission, it'll be the ammo for the inevitable Iannucci backlash which he doesn't deserve.

WAH.

butnut

I don't know if this will be a disaster, as they're editing a 2 1/2 hour recording into half an hour. And there were enough funnyish, in a gentle way, moments in there to keep you awake.

Actually, having re-read that, that means that they're scraping the barrel to get a full-lenght show out of this.

It won't be broadcast, as it's topical - so it's already a rarity. It's just being sent to the Radio 4 commissioner. Iannucci claimed to be aiming for the Saturday Luchtime spot.

alan strang

Quote from: "butnut"Seeing Armando in the flesh was a revelation, and my favourite bits were his off-hand introductory bits. He should be a stand-up, as he's just a naturally funny guy. He was really good at working an audience.

"The aply-named Rebecca Loos." - that bit was good. And the various not-part-of-the-show references to him appearing on Have I Got News For You simultaneously (eg consulting his watch at five to ten and saying "Ah, we're probably coming up to the bit where I bugger Greg Dyke up the arse"). The rest was just annoying.

QuoteLucy Porter was terrible, and had to re-do a load of her lines at the end, and they still weren't funny.

The re-done lines were written by the backroom writers (a team which included Tony Roche who wrote World Of Pub). Basically they have a alternate script ready-written before the show called the 'Book Of Answers' (99p Challenge had this too) which the cast use when they can't come up with their own funninesses. That was the script Porter was being asked to read from during the retakes.

One of us nicked it afterwards - some of the alternate answers were quite amusing in an unbroadcastable sort of way.

QuoteI found Jon Oliver (for some reason I thought it was Jon Holmes - does he exist?) and Jimmy Carr funnier than I expected, but then my expectations were pretty low. The Jon guy seemed to derive most of his humour from just taking an idea as far as possible

Which wouldn't be a problem if only the ideas were funny to begin with. But they seldom were. Far too forced - like Paul Merton's attempts at pushing running gags.

Quotethe only excusable answer is that they're the only ones who would do a pilot.

Jon Oliver was in Gash too. And in the Cambridge Footlights with that Ayaode/Holness shower. Never liked him.

QuoteI'm now really hoping that it doesn't get commissioned and that IA will try and create something that isn't a topical quiz show.

Amen. He can do so much better.

Darrell

Have we got a bootleg at all? Everyone who was going to do it seems to have either not got a ticket or got gravy in their Minidisc.

butnut

Quote from: "alan strang"The re-done lines were written by the backroom writers (a team which included Tony Roche who wrote World Of Pub). Basically they have a alternate script ready-written before the show called the 'Book Of Answers' (99p Challenge had this too) which the cast use when they can't come up with their own funninesses. That was the script Porter was being asked to read from during the retakes.

One of us nicked it afterwards - some of the alternate answers were quite amusing in an unbroadcastable sort of way.

Ah. I thought this was the case. It must have been pretty galling to have to read that out to the audience. It was pretty obvious to me and my mates, that she (and Dan G.) were reading from a script during these bits.

What did people make of the more staged bits? I.e. the Gervais bashing, the Hawking vs. Gervais battle, and the head of Anne Robinson bit?

I didn't think the Robinson stuff worked at all (although to what extent is this Iannucci's fault? None of the panel came up with anything funny.) The Gervais 'comedy god' answers made me chuckle a little bit, but it really does seem like a bit of bitterness on Iannucci's part to keep doing this joke, and I'm one of those people who've never 'got' the Office.

EDIT - sorry Darrell, no bootleg from me. There were people in front of me fiddling with minidisks though. Maybe they got it.

alan strang

Quote from: "butnut"What did people make of the more staged bits? I.e. the Gervais bashing, the Hawking vs. Gervais battle, and the head of Anne Robinson bit?

A bit out of touch. Why is he still doing Weakest Link jokes?

Should add here that he also used an idea from his Radio 1 show - having news reports for specific groups (read by some newsreader from C4 whose name I forget). These included 'The News For People With Flu' and something along the lines of 'The News For Da Kids On Da Street'.

QuoteThe Gervais 'comedy god' answers made me chuckle a little bit, but it really does seem like a bit of bitterness on Iannucci's part to keep doing this joke, and I'm one of those people who've never 'got' the Office.

For those who didn't suffer that two and a half hours of arse-soreness and breathing difficulties, Iannucci took samples of Gervais' voice and asked him the occasional question (in a sort of Rowan Atkinson/Nosenight sort of way) throughout most of the show. This culminated in a competition between Gervais and Stephen Hawking to find out who was the best 'genius' - a questions round (won by Hawking), and a punchline which featured the Prof 'doing the dance'.

This was capped with the declaration that Gervais had won after all after a recount.

Sounds good on paper. Sounded less-good in execution.

alan strang

Quote from: "Emergency Lalla Ward Ten"It was 'What Happened There?'

Wasn't it 'What Happened Then'?

butnut

Quote from: "alan strang"Sounds good on paper. Sounded less-good in execution.

Exactly right - and sums up the whole show. There was a lot of shuffling and general restlessness in the audience.

It was the format of the thing that disapponted me the most. There are so many programmes doing a similar thing. Surely Iannucci could come up with a better idea than this. On the tickets it says 'Welcome to Armando's Drop-In-Centre.' For some reason this gave me the idea that it might be some bizarre sitcom, or just a discussion-type programme. Even that would be better than a topical panel-game. It did feel a little like Gash without the set at times. Ho hum.

benthalo

Funnily enough, I now have a bad cold thanks to the recycled Drill Hall air. I only shifted the other one this time last week. And all for what?

Awful, awful, awful.... and I have the whole fucking thing on mindisc to join the towering pile of dreadful radio recordings that I'll never listen to again. If you can stand me sighing and swearing over the mic then you're welcome to it. I timed it at 140mins including the standard issue David Tyler warm up. It was actually more insufferable than December's aimless Beat The Kids recording with Front, Punt, Ince and Alex Lowe - a show which had no idea as to how the format worked so just drifted on with no laughs whatsoever. That was better!

I think some people are working under a misconception about how panel games work. Obviously, we all know that it had twelve writers (including Gash's Tetsel & Robbins, and Roger Drew?) including the six-man team, but this doesn't mean that you can judge a performer according to the quality of their material. The answers script which escaped last night is a good example. There are two pages of answers, none pre-selected, which they take turns to extemporise from in each round. They would have been at Drill Hall since at least noon working on rehearsals and further writing, revising the script as they go. With great talent, that recording would have sparkled under such conditions.

Hang on... twelve writers! Fucking hell.

In fact, that's what I kept thinking of on the way home. Take I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue for example. The Christmas Special from last year went on for a similar length of time in recording for an hour slot, but they generally run to 60mins for their regular 30min slot. The point is that they are relentlessly funny. Ian Pattinson, Cryer, Garden et al do not work on the policy that if they come up with a few credible passages then they can record an overspill of crap. It's *all* gold.

Or The Mary Whitehouse Experience. Sessions ran to an hour and were bursting at the seams with great material, which is why a reduction to 30mins makes them so fucking good and bear relentless repeated listening.

The younger generation of producers and performers now seem to work on the policy of chucking everything in and hoping that something sticks. This is simply inadequate, lazy and uncomfortable for the audience. Even cut to 30mins, last night's recording will be hard work. I promise, I've seen this happen before on many occasions. I'm sure Alan and ELW10 have too.

By the end of the night, I ended up with the script nabbed from Lucy Porter. So lazy it doesn't even have rehearsal and recording information on the cover.... Can I just point out that after nearly two and a half hours they'd only got two-thirds of the way through? I just wanted to get that off my chest.

As to the other point, pilots usually gather the average (hello, Emma Kennedy) but it's another misconception that a better line-up would transpire in an imagined series. That line up is actually Radio 4 flat out. The likes of Jeremy Hardy and Mark Steel don't need to bit part their way through the experimental radio slots.

So, the problem with Armando returning to the BBC and presumably trying out many different projects is that he has a finite number of names and faces to work with in the radio comedy stable. There's a pool of writers who write for Mitchell & Webb, Parsons & Naylor, Bad Week and Now Show, and due to the limitations of submissions from the public since Weekending and Huddlines ended, there isn't much of a turnover.  As with Gash, he's using cunts like Robbins & Tetsel, John Oliver etc, probably through lack of choice or ill-advised recommendation. He's been out of that cycle for too long. I don't seriously we can expect much better.

Where were Cecil & Riley anyway? I obviously wish death on them every day of the week, but it's rare for them not to help out with a Iannucci project.

I actually think it will get commissioned though. It'll fill the five week gap that the Friday 18:30/Saturday 12:30 slots leave when the Just A Minute/News Quiz/ISIHAC cycle takes a Summer break. Last year it was the insufferable Where Were We Then with Clive Anderson. They never last more than one series. The BBC are obviously pleased to have Iannucci back - and why shouldn't they after he left them so angrily in 1998? - so they'll give him anything he likes. Throwing shit at a wall might work in the long run, but I doubt it.

And the BBC Ticket Unit booklet reveals that 99p will after all return for a fourth series later in the year. Ye Gods. Speaking of unbearable recording sessions....

butnut

Quote from: "benthalo"By the end of the night, I ended up with the script nabbed from Lucy Porter. So lazy it doesn't even have rehearsal and recording information on the cover.... Can I just point out that after nearly two and a half hours they'd only got two-thirds of the way through? I just wanted to get that off my chest.

Bloody hell. Thank fuck they finished when they did.

Quote from: "benthalo"As to the other point, pilots usually gather the average (hello, Emma Kennedy) but it's another misconception that a better line-up would transpire in an imagined series. That line up is actually Radio 4 flat out. The likes of Jeremy Hardy and Mark Steel don't need to bit part their way through the experimental radio slots.

Yes, you're probably right. How depressing.

I really hope this isn't commissioned now, just to shake Iannucci up a bit, so that he can try and find a decent format and some decent people to work with. It's probably hoping for too much though.

benthalo

I hope so too, butnut. In an ideal world, he'd seek out new writers and performers off his own back.

I forgot to say that I have an idea for a quiz - name anything which Dan Gaster's appeared in since 2000. I can't. The last time I saw him was in a recording of The Motion Show where he was equally shit, ripping off Steve Punt's old material to his face. I thought we'd got rid of him. Well done for saying 'spaz' last night to elicit laughs, Dan. That'll get you a commission at Channel 4, probably.

It was definitely called What Happened There? Only a working title for the series, so be careful it doesn't sneak up on you in the Radio Times as Four Cunts And A Scorekeeper.

Even Jimmy Carr seemed bored. That's surely a testament to something. Mind you, the less he said the better. The homo stuff was really pissing me off.

Jemble Fred

Very interesting. I'm looking at my unused tickets now, and am rather glad that they're still intact, and I don't have flu. Replace Iannucci and let this shit be broadcast, it'll only make it easier for genuinely talented comics to eventually make a change, hopefully.

Emergency Lalla Ward Ten

Lucy Porter made a strange comment during a piece about middle-class traits, one of which is apparently 'thinking The Office is only *quite* good'. Or did I imagine that line?

What did she mean anyway? Why is that middle-class?

alan strang

Quote from: "bent halo"and I have the whole fucking thing on mindisc to join the towering pile of dreadful radio recordings that I'll never listen to again. If you can stand me sighing and swearing over the mic then you're welcome to it.

If you can be bothered whacking it onto a disc and sending it over I can stick some of it online.

Village Branson

I'd be interested in hearing any bootlegs, before anyone jumps to the conclusion that it's so utterly awfully the worst thing ever that it's not worth doing!

mayer

Quote from: "alan strang"
QuoteThe Gervais 'comedy god' answers made me chuckle a little bit, but it really does seem like a bit of bitterness on Iannucci's part to keep doing this joke, and I'm one of those people who've never 'got' the Office.

For those who didn't suffer that two and a half hours of arse-soreness and breathing difficulties, Iannucci took samples of Gervais' voice and asked him the occasional question (in a sort of Rowan Atkinson/Nosenight sort of way) throughout most of the show. This culminated in a competition between Gervais and Stephen Hawking to find out who was the best 'genius' - a questions round (won by Hawking), and a punchline which featured the Prof 'doing the dance'.

This was capped with the declaration that Gervais had won after all after a recount.

Sounds good on paper. Sounded less-good in execution.


So there are people who are making harsh angry comedy about other comedians, and even the so-called untouchable house-god Gervais. All this a year ago?


But it wasn't very good? I'm confused.

The Mumbler

It was just so flailingly and boringly done.  Iannucci might as well not have been there for most of it - it was the sound of his four surrounding mediocrities (five if you count an Emma Kennedy cameo, and I most certainly do) scrabbling for inspiration while I grew a couple of beards.  A weak joke or derivative idea can be forgiven if the spirit of the evening is sufficiently jolly, but everyone involved (including, I'm sorry to say, Iannucci himself) were content to use templates of Iannucci's own decade-old comedy ideas without ever surprising themselves with something new.   Not one of Iannucci's "team" dared invest a smidgeon of themselves into the evening, and nor did any of the writers.  

I really hope this new series can aim higher than that shambles.  Fingers crossed, Armando is able to choose some rather more varied contributors.  The final edition of Channel 4's almost universally slated Gash was - despite John Oliver - helped no end by Matthew Parris's appearance, and just maybe, this six-week run can do better by casting the net wider than David Tyler's address book - maybe.  I'm not holding my breath, partly because it might not be, and partly because it's three weeks away, and my lungs would shrivel long before then..

*Absolutely wrong thread posted in, sorry*

alan strang

Quote from: "mayer"So there are people who are making harsh angry comedy about other comedians, and even the so-called untouchable house-god Gervais. All this a year ago?

But it wasn't very good? I'm confused.

Well, it was neither harsh nor particularly angry. Plus, if memory serves, there was a little aside from Iannucci at one point where he squealed, indignantly, "I'm not being bitter or anything - I like The Office!", which further knackered it.

The Mumbler

Probably the best place to put this:

It's August 1992, and Time Out runs a competition to find a Readers Representative to join Nica Burns and its comedy critic Malcolm Hay on the judging panel for the Perrier Award* at the Edinburgh Festival.  They choose as a winner a 19-year old Surrey-born student at Manchester University.   Her name is Lucy Porter.

*Which Steve Coogan and John Thomson won that year.

alan strang

Wasn't there a TV documentary which followed the entrants' progress during the final week of the competition or something? I'm sure I remember tutting at it in the presence of ELW10.