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Why watch Bottom?

Started by paruses, November 13, 2020, 10:33:31 AM

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Coprolite

Subtlety and arcs? Lol.

If you don't laugh at the attempt to play chess you are dead inside.

Oh, and the name is great, being a double entendre for their social status and the human posterior.

Lisa Jesusandmarychain

Wouldnae recommend it to the OP at all." Bottom" is hugely overrated, and extremely badly written at times ( for example, that " chess" episode wherein it transpires that Richie had hidden the telly which Eddie thought had been repossessed; there's something very last - minute hastily written about that, as opposed to jolly well structured). I can just picture Paruses sitting through the senseless violence masquerading as slapstick with a stoney look on his face.
HTH.

sevendaughters

listened to that podcast about Bottom and then watched Culture straight after...they definitely over-sell its credentials as being a TV Beckett, and it doesn't need to be put in that kind of company to justify its existence. I didn't laugh as much I did at 12 but I found it just as compulsively watchable, full of energy and great snatches of dialogue (like who the fuck would make that weird Moliere gag these days?) and the grim texture of it isn't as oversold as the film - you get a slightly more realistic bodily heave when Eddie eats lard.

BeardFaceMan

Quote from: sevendaughters on November 14, 2020, 10:37:34 AM
listened to that podcast about Bottom and then watched Culture straight after...they definitely over-sell its credentials as being a TV Beckett, and it doesn't need to be put in that kind of company to justify its existence.

They came up with the idea for Bottom while performing a Beckett play.

thr0b

I will always choose to watch Bottom over The Young Ones.

sevendaughters

Quote from: BeardFaceMan on November 14, 2020, 10:51:07 AM
They came up with the idea for Bottom while performing a Beckett play.

yeah but it's not Beckett is it, it's nearer to Gimme Gimme Gimme than Endgame

PaulTMA

Quote from: JesusAndYourBush on November 13, 2020, 03:21:58 PM
If you like any of the other stuff Rik & Ade have done then watch it, you'll like it.
If you don't like the Young Ones etc then you probably won't like Bottom either.
But there's no hidden complexities, just dive in.

Morrissey's let himself go!

On the contrary, he's Lawrence from Felt if he'd never touched any drugs

Poirots BigGarlickyCorpse

Quote from: sevendaughters on November 14, 2020, 10:37:34 AM
listened to that podcast about Bottom and then watched Culture straight after...they definitely over-sell its credentials as being a TV Beckett, and it doesn't need to be put in that kind of company to justify its existence.
Agree. Not every piece of "low art" needs to be compared to "high art" to justify liking it. Not everything has to be secretly Very Deep and Meaningful. If you like violent slapstick that really goes for it you'll like Bottom. If that's not your thing then you won't like it. Personally I love it, I've watched it over and over and over and I don't think there's a single dud episode in it. But it's not, in my opinion, Objectively Good for the simple fact that people who want something wittier and more intellectual are going to think it's shit.

thenoise

I would argue that Bottom is such a good example of 'violent slapstick' that you don't necessarily have to be a slapstick fan to enjoy it. I mean, it might convert you.

Can the OP please just watch 'Gas' and then report back?

Jittlebags

The 'nose-hair' fight in Smells is great.

Marner and Me

Why watch Bottom, to relax in an evening for half an hour to watch two people tell rude jokes and batter each other, it's a great lark.

Shoulders?-Stomach!

Quote from: the on November 14, 2020, 01:58:50 AM
Be directly honest then, instead of crouching behind a string of anaemic equivocating comedy-critique clichés like a one-man think tank.

Fuck off you twat - honest enough for you

the

They already did that joke Inspector Pasty

Shoulders?-Stomach!

Quote from: the on November 14, 2020, 05:29:37 PM
Running on fumes

I believe he makes a completely reasonable, cogent and politely put point. Your reply to him makes you look like a dickhead.


the

So apparently you're their agent now. OK, I was just having a poke at what I thought were a load of flimsy watery 'these days' statements pretending to be a critical summation of something. Bit harsh, maybe, just found it irritating. Don't like that I did that, well... <zero reaction>.

Tip: use more verbal abuse in your replies, makes you look very reasoned.

petril


Lisa Jesusandmarychain

Quote from: petrilTanaka on November 14, 2020, 08:20:05 PM
...when you can watch Buttocks?

That so -called spoof  pissed me off, an' all. The depiction of the Richie character is all wrong, with his horrid, stained clothes. Richie always made an effort to look smart, with his somewhat limited wardrobe of crisp, white shirt and tie and relatively smart looking jeans, the belt going way above the waistline being the only concession to sartorial inelegance. Also, Eddie never dressed up as a teddy boy, did he? Unless the writers were going for a deliberately Reeves and Mortimer - type wilfully and deliberately - off beam interpretation of the characters they is allegedly representing? Wouldnae give the writers of this half-arsed spoof that much credit, though. I know that half an arse is quite literally a buttock, but still, no quarter given by me, not granting them conceptualization rights pleas on that front either, and what about that rogue "s" ?

Noodle Lizard

I'm another one who's never quite got Bottom (or The Young Ones for that matter). It's impossible for me to watch them without imagining some boring talking-head going on about how "it's punk rock, it's anaaaarchic". Not the fairest criticism, I know, but I've grown to really resent that sort of thing - especially when most of the key players were about as "establishment" as it gets.

Wonderful Butternut

Quote from: petrilTanaka on November 14, 2020, 08:20:05 PM
...when you can watch Buttocks?

I don't think anyone involved in the production of that watched Bottom for more than 3 minutes. The squalor alone is too overt. Sure they live in a horrible dingy flat and Richie cooks mould out of old pots more than once, but they both still wear shirts and ties (a full suit usually for Eddie), there isn't that much crap all over the place, and there's stuff like the sideboard and Hammond organ in the apartment which in Richie's head are probably expensive posh items.

They're pretentious (maybe not so much Eddie, but definitely Richie) and deluded into thinking they have something to offer women rather than just being base slobs. Total overanalysis for the sketch I know, but I don't care.

Although I think one of the girls is Helen Lederer, who played the destitute aristocrat that Richie tried to get with in actual Bottom.

Lemming

#49
As a massive fan of Bottom - it's my favourite TV show, and I even like the live shows everyone hates - I've always thought the grime/despair/Waiting For Godot aspects are often overstated. There are traces of that in the first series (and they are only traces), but otherwise it's just surreal cartoon-like slapstick. If anything, it's got a strangely optimistic tone, in that nothing that ever happens actually affects the characters. No matter how badly they get fucked up in an episode (including being actually killed), they're always back to normal at the start of the next episode. Nothing can shake Richie's hyperinflated ego or crush his sense of aspiration, however much he gets physically and socially battered.

up_the_hampipe

Quote from: the on November 14, 2020, 06:00:29 PM
So apparently you're their agent now. OK, I was just having a poke at what I thought were a load of flimsy watery 'these days' statements pretending to be a critical summation of something. Bit harsh, maybe, just found it irritating. Don't like that I did that, well... <zero reaction>.

Tip: use more verbal abuse in your replies, makes you look very reasoned.

Sweetie, I promise I'm not pretending to be anything other than a forum poster with an opinion on a thing.

tinner777

Rik is trending now on twitter.
Gas may be the most perfect piece of comedy I've seen. It's just so silly.

Mister Six


paruses

Have enjoyed reading the replies to this and now agree with everyone, almost. Have watched Gas and Culture over the weekend.

Can't believe that these were made way back at the beginning of the 90s. I had in my head that they were the other end of the decade. Am wondering now if I was put off by proxy: by hearing about it from university friends doing bad impersonations.

I did enjoy some of the violent slapstick. Turns out it's the repetition that I find really funny - in Gas there is the punching / frying pan piece that made me laugh quite hard the longer it went on. I don't really enjoy the ad hoc punches or being stabbed with a fork and I realised that I could watch Chevy Chase or Peter Sellars knock things over for hours but short random violence does nothing for me.

The set is nowhere near as grim or dirty as I thought. I think that might be from the very short bits of clips of the live show that I've seen. Because it's so stagey it's fine. In reply to and after consideration of Blumf's question - yes I've seen 15 Storeys High and those sets make me feel more queasy, I would say. I'm by no means a neat-freak but there's something about other people's sparse, dated living spaces that puts me on edge. Not something I had thought about before.

I didn't find it particularly dated. A few of the jokes stood out that might be frowned on - kebab houses sell dog meat, the up-sheet photographs of the neighbour's girlfriend. Several people have said how quotable it is but I can't see that myself but then two episodes is probably not a good sample size. I did find it very stagey - obvs - and it's no surprise at all that they came up with the idea while they were in a Beckett production.

On the characters it's clear that they're not continuations of TYO characters. The similarities would be that Eddie has the same voice and Richie has similar character traits. The other thing would be to point out that it's hardly Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads? in terms of needing continuation of character.

I will watch more of them at some point - all of it and the film is on Netflix - but my take away is that I probably missed it at the right time of my life and so while I can see its merits I have no real fondness for it.

poodlefaker

Quote from: Lemming on November 13, 2020, 10:37:03 AM
Just dive into it, only 18 episodes.

This has truly shocked me. I've never been a big fan and only ever watched a few episodes, but for some reason I thought there were about ten series. It seemed to go on for years.

dead-ced-dead

Quote from: poodlefaker on November 16, 2020, 12:51:54 PM
This has truly shocked me. I've never been a big fan and only ever watched a few episodes, but for some reason I thought there were about ten series. It seemed to go on for years.

Maybe taking in the stage shows and a movie into account and the fact that there was a long gap between seasons 2 and 3 (almost 3 years), so for such a short run it had a lot of years behind its back.

The Giggling Bean

What happened to series 4? I seem to recall it didn't happen due to one of two reasons. There was a change of management who decided it didn't fit into their vision at the time or Adrian Edmondson got fed up doing it. I seem to recall there was some bad feeling about it at the time.

Also, were the BBC right at the time not to recommission it at the time? I was a big fan of Rik and Ade at the time but S3 did feel to me like the wrapping up of the idea. If I go back to watch Bottom it's usually either series 1 or 2 I watch. S3 never gripped me in the same way as the first 2, maybe because it was starting to get too fantastical.

the

I've always been sceptical about how tangible any intended fourth series was. Wikipedia doesn't even mention it anymore, and there were never any citations to its previous claims to having been written. (Why would you write six full scripts before you've even got a commission anyway.)

Besides, the series 3 dip in quality, plus the fact that they killed the characters off in it so soon before this supposed series 4 seems to suggest that the creators wouldn't have been sure of what they wanted or what their reasons for continuing were.

Utter Shit

Fantastic bit of correspondence between Rik and a fan:


sevendaughters

Genuinely didn't know the episode 's Out1 was only shown much later than intended because of a real murder on Wimbledon Common. Bit like that paintball show on Channel 4 (X-Fire) that got yanked because of the Afghan invasion.

1 are all the episodes meant to be Bottom [Title]?