Jez or Mark?

[Blue Jam]

A friend of mine summed it up quite well I thought by saying, "if you were dying in a ditch and Mark discovered you, he would probably consider just walking by and ignoring you but wouldn't actually go through with it whereas Jez definitely would without any qualms." For all the idiosyncrasies and neuroses Mark has, Jez is certainly more of a sociopath.

I'm not so sure about that. I think Jeremy would want to be a bit of a hero and interfere and have a story to tell, while Mark would just not want to get involved in case you actually did die and he got into trouble somehow, or in case he got a bit of blood on his new tie.

I think they both would have chickened out of joining the French Resistance, though.

[imitationleather]

I watched a few latter series episodes last night and what really stuck out, and something I'd not noticed that much during previous viewings, was how clunky the writing became towards the end. It turned into just an endless succession of one-liners instead of dialogue that actually reflected things the established characters might say. It didn't feel like actual people having a conversation anymore. The one where they're stuck in Zara's flat (which I had liked before) is particularly horrible for it.

[Darles Chickens]

The thing that makes the first couple of series so good (particularly the first) is that the scenarios are very ordinary and natural.  In the first series, there are plenty of scenes where they're just sitting around in their flat, watching TV, painting with 'God', just living their pedestrian lives.  The comedy is driven by the characters and some good lines, not by some over-arching storyline, and it's all the better for it.

The increasingly ridiculous storylines were the beginning of the move towards cartoonish farce, and it definitely lost something for me at that point, watchfingers notwithstanding.

[QDRPHNC]

Yeah, it's a difference between:

"Brown for first course, white for pudding. Brown is savoury, white's the treat. Of course I'm the one who's laughing because I actually love brown toast."

and

"I'm the firestarter, twisted firestarter!"

It's a matter of tone and quality, I'm afraid.

[undeliberated]

The big shift is in series 4 I think - general quality is quite high but there's a very definite shift in the structure so that each episode is building up to a sort of Edgy Shocking Set Piece, all of which are badly done: episode 1 the firestarting's not so bad: episode 2 the terrible fake brain tumour, episode 3 shitting in the pool, episode 4 suck offing and cupboard hiding, episode 5 eating dog. I tend to just skip the last 5 minutes of any episode of series 4 that I end up watching. The wedding episode is great throughout, and the writing through the rest of the episodes is all great. But it's the "OMG!" endings of each one that make them feel clunky and inorganic.

None of the other series have that specific problem, but the general quality of writing after that shifted down a level. 5 and 6 are subpar, 7 is an uptick, 8 is the only actively bad series, and 9 is back to 5 and 6 quality, but with a slightly bizarre rushed and hectic tone that's a bit incompatible with the rest of the series.

But it's the Edgy Endings in series 4 that throw everything off, I think. They couldn't really row back to low key excellent after that.