Peep Time (Amazon)

[steveh]

Have been running out of new comedy so I ended up watching this new Japanese show on Amazon. It stars former boyband member Shingo Katori as Shinichi Toneli, a clumsy fool who lives next door to a family who happen to have a hole in their apartment through to his, drilled by the former tenant so he could spy on the air hostess who used to live in Toneli's apartment. This allows the father and then the daughter to spy on him, with the daughter going on to put videos of him up on YouTube where his daft antics become a big hit.

I know very little about Japanese TV comedy to be honest so I have no idea how it fits into that landscape. It's very stagey in the acting, almost pantomime-like perhaps, filmed in front of a studio audience except for some short inserts. The plot and most of the jokes extremely corny and it's rather dated in style most of the time. And yet it has these bits of utter daftness and slapstick that are laugh out loud funny and it redeems itself for the rest. Katori is genuinely good at physical comedy and there's also somehow a charm to the whole show.

It is of course entirely possible my judgement has become completely warped this year.

[thenoise]

Only thing I know about Japanese comedy is the Gets guy on A&J, and silly gameshow type stuff like Silent Library.
I daresay the more sophisticated material doesnt translate.

[Fr.Bigley]

you'd have thought after Nagasaki, they would have stopped antagonising the west..obviously not.