The Catherine Tate Show- Head's up.

[Vermschneid Mehearties]

Anyone get the feeling that The Guardian are just promoting any new comedy?

After reading G2 and The Guide over the winter, which has seen countless new comedies- almost everyone was being almost brainlessly applauded. Strange.

Especially seen as people on here haven't liked most of it, and they haven't received particularly high audiences.

[Marcus Or Relius]

I wonder if the BBC will ever have to sink to the tactics of ITV - shoving a programme to 1AM on a Monday morning by the third episode of the first (and last) series in the hope that no-one will continue watching.

[Neil]

Isn't that pretty much what they did with Trevors World Of Sport?

[Darrell]

Isn't that pretty much what they did with Trevor's World Of Sport?

They've been moaned into repeating that in a proper timeslot later in the year by Andy Hamilton. I don't know why, it's not really very good at all.

[butnut]

Surely the point is that it's the exact opposite of the 'old-fashioned' sketch show format? 'Old-fashioned', to me, suggests NOBA, Two Ronnies, Frost Show, DNAYS, Monty Python etc, where you can tell that you're watching performers give live performances in front of dodgy sets. This show's format was somewhere between Harry Enfield, Smack The Pony and, most of all, Armstrong & Miller (lame ideas stretched out way too far). If you want to do a properly 'innovative' and most importantly FUNNY sketch show, you've got to revert to the live feel of the classics. Surprising that nobody's really attempted it for ten years or so.

Yes - I love that aspect about watching the Python TV shows again. There are some scenes where you really feel they could crack up totally at any moment - and there's loads of fuck ups that they just leave in. In the Hilter in England sketch I'm sure Idle keeps coming in a line too early almost every time. And I was thinking, probably like you, they'd never allow that on any TV show these days - which is a massive shame.

[23 Daves]

I wonder if the BBC will ever have to sink to the tactics of ITV - shoving a programme to 1AM on a Monday morning by the third episode of the first (and last) series in the hope that no-one will continue watching.

Didn't they pretty much do that with "Attention Scum"?

[Johnny Yesno]

Surely the point is that it's the exact opposite of the 'old-fashioned' sketch show format? 'Old-fashioned', to me, suggests NOBA, Two Ronnies, Frost Show, DNAYS, Monty Python etc, where you can tell that you're watching performers give live performances in front of dodgy sets. This show's format was somewhere between Harry Enfield, Smack The Pony and, most of all, Armstrong & Miller (lame ideas stretched out way too far). If you want to do a properly 'innovative' and most importantly FUNNY sketch show, you've got to revert to the live feel of the classics. Surprising that nobody's really attempted it for ten years or so.

Hmm... To some of the younger and/or more foreign VWs Harry Enfield could be pretty old-fashioned. The Frost Show, by that standard, is prehistoric. I'm old enough to decode NOBA but what the hell is DNAYS?

[Jemble Fred]

Do Not Adjust Your Set.

[Johnny Yesno]

I wonder if the BBC will ever have to sink to the tactics of ITV - shoving a programme to 1AM on a Monday morning by the third episode of the first (and last) series in the hope that no-one will continue watching.

Didn't they pretty much do that with "Attention Scum"?

They did indeed. Totally out of order.

Isn't that pretty much what they did with Trevor's World Of Sport?

They've been moaned into repeating that in a proper timeslot later in the year by Andy Hamilton. I don't know why, it's not really very good at all.

I dunno who Andy Hamilton is but I think it deserves a proper showing. I thought it was dead good and I don't even like sport.

Do Not Adjust Your Set.

Ah, yes of course. That's pretty ancient too, isn't it?

[Vermschneid Mehearties]

It's back and it's as funny as ever.

Seriously now- We're halfway through the latest episode and I've barely raised a smirk. The Guardians mini-review of it today seemed to be positively cumming over it. Strange.

"What are you, a fucking dunce or something?" is the closest I've got to a laugh.

[Capuchin]

It really is bad though. It's not a case of certain type of humour, or not 'getting' it, it's just bad.
It's like you can see its seams. Bad.

edit:speling

[Vermschneid Mehearties]

Yes I somewhat agree with that. When you actually notice errors in the comic timing and the acting which on other shows just aren't there (and you take that fact for granted too) things are going a bit wrong.

And must we be treated to the same "Haha an old person shouting FUCK" every week. The swearing wasn't even included at the right moments, and I was wondering why the audience seemed to be in stitches whilst I was sitting there...really quite bored.

The schoolkids sketch was again the best. It seems to maintain a level of comedy throughout unlike the others, and is quite direct, which is probably why it works. Unfortunately the same jokes were used as last week.

I feel like tuning in just to see whether she is going to be using these 3 or 4 times in every episode until the end of the series. If that does happen, then I'll certainly be huffing and puffing a bit more, especially seen as this has been well received by the critics.

[Capuchin]

Has it? See, I knew nothing about this beforehand. I haven't read anything about it, I don't really know who the actress is though i have a feeling i've seen her in something, and I didn't have any other misconceptions-it's not like it's on ITV.
But it's just obviously bad. All I could think was being an actor delivering those lines. Wouldn't you feel embarrassed? It'd be different perhaps if you weren't sure how the material would go down, or something, but it's just obviously bad.
I'm not some comedy-dissection genius but in this case I don't think you need to be, eh?

[Utter Shit]

Not only do I feel like I wasted half an hour watching the show, I think I'm going to lose another few days wondering how something can possibly be so terrible. What a pile of cack. And this is coming from someone who likes Friends, Lee Evans and...Coupling...

Take the 'yoof' scene for example, where the girl doesn't get invited to the party. I don't know if any of you watch Soccer AM, but that show takes pride in having terrible, unfunny and corny gags...now, it has a very similar skit where two teen girls are talking in the same way as on this show. Bearing in mind that the comedy in Soccer AM comes from how incredibly shitty both the jokes and the delivery are, it's incredible to find that the punchlines are FUNNIER in the Soccer AM version. Not to mention more believable, despite the fact that the two teen girls are played by large, hairy men who's only 'female' features are lipstick and a dress.

[Jimmy]

The BBC2 announcer introduced it as "great cult comedy in the making" or some other shite...

[imitationleather]

Well they're not going to announce it as, "one of the biggest piles of shit the channel has ever seen" and follow it up with a full and frank apology, are they? It'd be nice if they did though.

I've noticed continuity announcers bigging up shows a lot more recently. "Look, I'm watching the fucker, you don't need to tell me how good it is," I say, even though no one's listening. The announcers must be competing over who gets the best slots ("BBC Learning Zone? Oh no!") and the current popular tactic is licking the arse of the channel as much as possible.

[It Was Cancer]

This was on again tonight, and having missed most of it last week, I have my beautifully judgemental conculsion to draw.

Repetitive, boring, dull, uninspiring, irritating crap.

The fact that it's called The Catherine Tate Show also erks me something mad.

Just like with Smack the Pony, people think girls are going to like it just because it's "Woman power!"- women sticking to stereotypically female topics and situations.  Men dress up as women, women should dress up as men and tackle the same shit they do. (is a girl by the way)

I want something daring.

She's certainly a talented comic actress but her writing isn't funny and her characters make me want to tear off my arm just to throw it at the telly.


*jumps off high horse* Mind me arse.

[Emergency Lalla Ward Ten]

It's not very good. Compare that sketch about the woman marrying the serial killer with the fake documentaries Victoria Wood used to do 20 years ago, oozing with bile, oddness and millions of high-quality jokes. This show is OK in places, but nothing special.

And *why* do they have to filmise it all? Sketches set in living rooms and doctor's surgeries do not need to look "cinematic". If the film/video distinction is irrelevant and 'only nerds can tell the difference' (as the accusation often goes), then why bother doing it at all? I hate the way it's become the default way of shooting comedy - as if you're not allowed to use normal VT for fear of looking old-fashioned. (And if that's your fear, don't do Victoria Wood rip-offs in the first place!)

[Nearly Annually]

Gi's a job as a script editor. Go on, gi's it.


I disagree with this though:

When you actually notice errors in the comic timing and the acting which on other shows just aren't there

Unless you mean the support cast ... and I can't say I noticed much wrong there either. To me she's an extremely impressive actress with fantastic attention to detail, and she definitely could sustain such long sketches if they were written as competently as they're performed. Don't get me wrong, I easily took the decision to go and walk the dog by about half way through this time, once I'd clocked the schoolgirl sketch, which knocks a ton of shit out of Matt Lucas doesn't it, and his was widely received as one of the two best bits in Little Britain, which experienced a little more in the way of hype didn't it - but all said and done, the show's not good enough, no.

The sweary old lady ... I don't get the impression that she was originally written as a Most Gratuitous Use Of The Word "Fuck" contender. It's just the taped audience who've decided that all they're waiting for is the next incidence of that word. That would explain why in last night's it seemed to appear at the wrong intervals, as VM says - because it was never meant to be the be-all and end-all of the character. That's my guess. The point of her is her schizophrenic cruelty.


Gor, it looks like I really care about this don't it. Catherine and Nearly sitting in a tree...

[gazzyk1ns]

I saw this tonight.

I have no descriptive words for it really, I thought that it was completely unfunny and very irritating. In a similar vein to when I first saw "Dare To Believe", I sat there in front of the television and thought "No, this can't actually be on television, can it? Surely there is seriously nobody who thinks it's funny?". I'm not being sarcastic at all, I genuinely do not understand how anyone would find this show funny. A lot of the stuff reminds me of the kind of things that the twat who's got a bit too pissed up in the pub after his first week at 6th form comes out with.

I can see how maybe the actual writers/performers might not be able to judge how funny the end product is, after endless performing of the sketches and/or editing them over and over I should think it will be quite hard to look at anything objectively, your opinion would be completely biased and different to anyone watching it for the first time.

But surely programmes have to be vetted in some way at the channel which will be broadcasting them? Again, I can't understand how someone's not watched this pre-broadcast and thought/said "Ah, this is absolute rubbish, we need to take some action here...". It depends on who does the vetting I suppose... as I said about Dare To Believe, I imagined a load of 40-somethings watching it and hating it... but then saying "Well that's not the point, the kids will love it, they liked the Fast Show with it's wackiness and repetition didn't they..."

[Vermschneid Mehearties]

On a vaguely similar note, that 'Mad About Alice' cranes in 9 million viewers a week supposedly. Even though it makes The Catherine Tate Show look like....well good.

[Jemble Fred]

[Munday's Chylde]

How apt, a frame from peanuts in a thread about something not being funny.

[Purple Tentacle]

Not much to add, except I saw this for the first time last night and was staggered at how poor it was.

Quite apart from the GROSS arrogance in naming the show after yourself (Does anyone ever call Sgt. Bilko 'The Phil Silvers Show'? Why won't they learn? When John Cleese refused to let the BBC call it 'John Cleese's Flying Circus', you would have thought that that little habit was quashed forever), the writing is beneath that of a 6 year old.

Seriously.


"Do I look like I'm bothered?" repeated 10 times in a sketch? Fucking HELL. Christ. That's a joke that grew old in the playground when I was five.

I'm a bit confused with Almost's assertion over the page that her schoolgirl is funnier than Matt Lucas' , Lucas' act was a feat of verbal dexterity, Tate's schoolgirl is the palest of imitations, the anti-funny.

Unbelievable.

[Almost Yearly]

Yeah, it was a particularly rubbish one last night, from what I saw of it between doing other stuff.


I'm just a bit anti Little Britain, Poips, that's all, largely because of the gap between the hype and the reality. Oh and because Walliams does zilch for me. And Lucas himself admits that his schoolgirl is just a matter of many, many takes.


The only defence of the Catherine Tate Show I've offered on here is that she herself is a worthy talent. The material isn't up to it. Someone mentioned Emma Thompson's old BBC1 show early in this thread, and that hit the nail on the head.

[benthalo]

So disappointing that even Arthur Mathews leaves after three weeks, or so it appears judging from last night's credits. And I thought he had absolutely no standards these days. (Anyone ever heard Luneen Live?)

[fbb bastard]

this is truely getting embarrasing......when last night they ran a trailer for next weeks start of "nighty night"...i thought "thank fuck they have pulled this rubbish 3 or so weeks in"..but to no avail.....and given the "quality" of the trailer cant quite decide if its for the better or worse

3 sketches of that "dunno...i am mad me" couple crap was verging on misanthropic plus the same of that "guess how much/many" as well......christ

and a little past the mark i know but the last couple of weeks....that women getting married to someone on deathrow......what a fucking cheeky rip off and with rebecca front as well involved....thieving bastards