Little - Remenbered Comedy Shows

[Cuellar]

That Rob Brydon panel show that sort of exposed panel shows and how they're composed. Annually Retentive. Sharon Horgan was in it too before she was quite as powerful and omnipresent as she appears to be now. It was good. At least, I remember really liking it.

Yes, I liked this.

"What world do you live in where you see me and John Inverdale in a 'titty bar'?"

[Gurke and Hare]

Director's Commentary - Rob Brydon doing fake commentary tracks for old episodes of real shows. Quite good as I remember, but the concept dates it to a pretty specific period. I know the recent Paul Merton series DVDs have a commentary, but I get the impression they're a fairly rare thing these days.

[George White]

This might be well-remembered by those the right age at the time, but the mid-00s kids' sketch show Stupid, with Marcus Brigstocke. One recurring sketch was a gran who kept pretending to be dead to freak out her grandson, another was a scout leader who took his troop on excursions to stake out his ex-wife's 'fancy man'.

On a similar kids' show tip, WYSIWIG, the alien who fell to earth to understand the world on CITV in 1992. Just found an episode on YT, with bonus Boyd https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w23nONQhL3I

I loved Stupid as a kid, but my mum was slightly bemused by my love.
First place I ever saw Mitch Benn too, who played a rival monarch.

[Chriddof]

Going back to Wysiwyg, as mentioned a few pages ago - Peter Baynham and Ben Miller are in the writer's credits at the end of that upload. I was also pleased to see some Amiga-created "Rovercam" graphics, clearly done in Deluxe Paint (and Ocean bloody Software get credited for it!). And Clive Mantle appears as Nick Wilton's dopey alien mate, right before he started appearing in Casualty.

[George White]

Wasn't Julie Dawn Cole in it, Veruca Salt herself/

[thenoise]

Director's Commentary - Rob Brydon doing fake commentary tracks for old episodes of real shows. Quite good as I remember, but the concept dates it to a pretty specific period. I know the recent Paul Merton series DVDs have a commentary, but I get the impression they're a fairly rare thing these days.

Commentaries are definitely still about, at least in the world of boutique fancy pants collector blu ray sets, although they usually just repeat the anecdotes related in the 120 page hardback book that your film is inexplicably packaged with. They do tend to be a bit less shit than they used to be, if the director is involved they are probably being interviewed by a savvy journalist who has done their research, rather than just being some old duffer piping up every ten minutes to say "beautiful actress yes. Wonderful. Dont remember her name'

[willbo]

Does anyone remember some late night mid 90s show (think it was on 11-12 pm on ITV) that had some Spanish/Portuguese language, cheesy doctor soap opera with funny dubbing over the top? (you could faintly hear the original dialogue). I had one episode on a VHS after a taping of one of the Back to the Future films. And the surgeons were all swearing at each other and being vulgar in funny "Adam and Joe show" style voices. I think it may have had jokes about Lady Diana too

[Small Man Big Horse]

Does anyone remember some late night mid 90s show (think it was on 11-12 pm on ITV) that had some Spanish/Portuguese language, cheesy doctor soap opera with funny dubbing over the top? (you could faintly hear the original dialogue). I had one episode on a VHS after a taping of one of the Back to the Future films. And the surgeons were all swearing at each other and being vulgar in funny "Adam and Joe show" style voices. I think it may have had jokes about Lady Diana too

Do you mean The Staggering Stories of Ferdinand de Bargos?

[Famous Mortimer]

Does anyone remember some late night mid 90s show (think it was on 11-12 pm on ITV) that had some Spanish/Portuguese language, cheesy doctor soap opera with funny dubbing over the top? (you could faintly hear the original dialogue). I had one episode on a VHS after a taping of one of the Back to the Future films. And the surgeons were all swearing at each other and being vulgar in funny "Adam and Joe show" style voices. I think it may have had jokes about Lady Diana too

When I think Ferdinand De Bargos, "Soupy Norman" always pops up in my mind.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHuFWYh5QF4

[willbo]

Do you mean The Staggering Stories of Ferdinand de Bargos?

that sounds familiar, I'll google it. edit - I've just watched it, and i think the show I'm thinking of was on ITV, and made from one glossy 80s foreign soap, not using different clips and older black and white clips like that. If it isn't that, it definitely would have been a rip off of the idea though.

[Bad Ambassador]

"Pallas"?

[willbo]

I've just discovered from searching old threads that "revoice" comedies were a genre, and there's an Australian cop one called Bargearse which has a bit of a fanbase. I guess my show was part of this thing. I'll google pallas

[Bad Ambassador]

http://www.simondunn.me.uk/?p=8645

[willbo]

http://www.simondunn.me.uk/?p=8645

thanks, I guess klinik must be it

[millwall32]

Holding the Fort had a spin off with Matthew Kelly's character Fitz on Channel 4 called Relative Strangers where he lived with his estranged brother and father.

Come to think of it, Channel 4 had a load of comedy shows that have been lost to time.

Someone from this parish directed me to the whole series of Dream Stuffing being on youtube (since been taken down) which is something I vaguely remember. Watching it now it's... not bad. Very likeable in fact. Fairly standard odd couple setup but developed over its 10 episodes with Mo reconciling with her mother. Living in a tower block in the 80s meself, I remember it being a rarity seeing people who lived in tower blocks on TV (Only Fools and Horses being the obvious one). It's the kind of show that would get plaudits now for having two women leads (one of them being mixed race as well), and a none stereotypical gay man. Only lasted one series due to one of the writers sadly dying not long after.

One show that leapt from ITV to Channel 4 was It Takes a Worried Man by the writer of Shelley, Peter Tilbury. Another vague memory of mine, mostly for the terrifying end credits where we see him literally crack up and fall to pieces. It's an odd show for a studio sitcom, it's very muted and not big on laughs but it's well ahead of its time in mining paranoia for laughs.

Another fairly standard one series ITV sitcom, Sometime Never. Got a fair bit of promotion at the time because it was the first (and only) sitcom vehicle for Flaming Hamsters who were best known as them from the Philadelphia ads. Not terrible but pretty stale even at the time given it came out a year after Father Ted and two years after Friends. It was late 80's standup turned into a sitcom and it showed.

Something I really enjoyed despite being way too young for it at the time, The Ritz. Can't remember a thing about it though, maybe it's time for a rewatch...

I've been thinking about The Ritz for years. Remembered the show but not the name. Thanks for the reminder.

[millwall32]

I vaguely remember Lame Ducks as being incredibly depressing, even more so than Dear John which at least had one or two lively characters. Lorraine Chase, seldom the mark of TV quality; the concept seemed to be that a bunch of miserable people lived in a whimsical building and maybe at some point they would have wacky adventures but it never really happened. It was in a similarly melancholy/unfunny mood to some of Carla Lane's less successful, duller stuff.[nb]In fairness, Lane's Solo and The Mistress were good despite being not exactly Bread or Butterflies in tone, but I recall there was one or two real flops when she got all into animal rights and decided human beings were all shit[/nb] Apparently Lame Ducks was by Peter J. Hammond who was better known for science fiction (I guess making it the less successful Kinvig.)

Comments a couple of pages back reminded me of Rhona, the early lesbian-com with Rhona Cameron, which was possibly marginally better than Sue Perkins' vet-com Heading Out, but still not particularly hilarious from what I remember. I think I mainly watched Rhona because I had a soft spot for Cameron who grew up near Edinburgh so she had a sort of local connection at a time when Scottish comedy usually meant loud drunk Glaswegians (although Rhona was set in London, the interwebs inform me).

Speaking of Scottish comedy, City Lights was massive here but I've no idea how it fared south of the Border, and featured a lot of Scotland's best comic actors. It started as a mildly-amusing middle-class Glaswegian workplace comedy with Gerard Kelly, Jonathan Watson, and Dave Anderson's shiny pate, but seemed to find it was funnier having cliched Glaswegian drunks played by the likes of Andy Gray; I'm sure Elaine C Smith was in it, and possibly Gregor Fisher.

I just looked at Rhona Cameron's website. She hasn't had any gigs since 2012 and doesn't seem to have any credits or news anywhere since then. Is she....OK?

[kalowski]

Holding the Fort had a spin off with Matthew Kelly's character Fitz on Channel 4 called Relative Strangers where he lived with his estranged brother and father.

I have a vague memory of these two shows being quite good. Am I right? Am I right?


(You're not wrong.)

[olliebean]

I just looked at Rhona Cameron's website. She hasn't had any gigs since 2012 and doesn't seem to have any credits or news anywhere since then. Is she....OK?

IMDb has five credits for her since 2021, most recently an episode of Silent Witness last year.

[DrGreggles]

Susan Calman replaced her as the BBC's go-to lesbian, and they're only allowed one, so work dried up.

[purlieu]

All Night Long, about people working in a bakery overnight to prepare bread for the morning. I only remember watching it, but nothing about it at all. Apparently starred Keith Barron.

tlc, a hospital sitcom starring Reece Shearsmith, Alexander Armstrong and Tim Brooke-Taylor. I recall liking it as a teenager, although the high-profile nature of its three main stars suggests the fact that it's faded into obscurity means it might have been awful. Christ, I just remembered Tim died.

One for the Road. A pre-Jonathan Creek Alan Davies as a travel agent who jacks his job in and travels around the world and uses his work camcorder to send videos back about his trip. Reasonably funny, but also with a sense of fun and warmth.

[Icehaven]

One for the Road. A pre-Jonathan Creek Alan Davies as a travel agent who jacks his job in and travels around the world and uses his work camcorder to send videos back about his trip. Reasonably funny, but also with a sense of fun and warmth.

Never saw or heard of this but I like the idea, only not with Alan Davies.

[dothestrand]

In a completely different genre, May to December with sitcom mainstay Anton Rogers in an unlikely intergenerational romance with a much younger PE teacher. Probably not the sort of thing you'd get in 2020. One of those relaxing, easy-going, but not very funny, slightly soapy, sitcoms, ideal for a Sunday evening. You can guess the theme music, but a particularly insipid Weill cover.

I went back and watched the early episodes of May to December on Youtube a while back. Of the early 90s BBC prime-time comedy output, it's still reasonably OK. No big guffaws, but fairly gentle comedy - it passes the time inoffensively. Eve Matheson's character was meant to be working-class - these sitcoms were always full of unconvincing working class women - wasn't Belinda Lang's mum in 2.4 Children meant to be working-class (Gary Olsen certainly was). And these sitcoms are usually set in West or North-west London. May to December was Pinner. 2.4 Children was Chiswick, I think. My Hero was Northolt.

[Mr Banlon]

The outside shots of the house in My Hero were Pinner and location stuff was Pinner as well. Northolt is/was rough as fuck.

[millwall32]

IMDb has five credits for her since 2021, most recently an episode of Silent Witness last year.

Cool. I looked at her website and there wasn't a gig since 2012.
Then put her name into Google news and there wasn't anything for years.
Hadn't occurred to me to look on IMDb.

[sophie.pilbeam]

I'll add some Australian ones.

The Bob Morrison Show. 1994 family sitcom told from the perspective of their dog, with accompanying wacky internal monologue. Tanked hard, was a go-to joke about failed TV shows for a bit, then was never spoken of again. Someone managed to stick off-air recordings on YouTube if anyone's curious.

Eagle & Evans. Odd 2004 series sold as a hybrid sketch show / sitcom, about two warm-up guys trying to break into TV by pitching sketch ideas to the show's producer, which would then play out on screen. In practice it was just a sketch show, with the "real life" bits also written and performed as self-contained sketches, with no change in tone and no ongoing story. It moved around the schedules a lot thanks to snap election coverage, so it was barely noticed even at the time. The sketches were a mixture of extremely bland (The IT guy doesn't understand computers!) and attempted non-sequitur surrealism (A man bends over to pick up a coin, then explodes). The only recurring sketch character was a very tall woman who got increasingly confrontational with people until she made a horrible, nasal "AAAAA" noise and the sketch abruptly ended. Random bits are on YouTube.

Con's Bewdiful Holiday Videos. "Con the Fruiterer" was a series of 80's comedy sketches about a Greek sterotype who said "BEWDIFUUULLLL" a lot, and the character became popular enough to transcend the show he started off in. In 1997, in what I think was the last attempt to milk something out of it, Con was repurposed as the host of a Funniest Home Videos-style show where he'd narrate footage of people injuring themselves as though they were holiday videos of his extended family. The Con character is well remembered (and a go-to "these days, you can't even belittle entire ethnicities on TV without those same ethnicities being mildly unhappy" talking point), but the only evidence of this particular show I can find is a single commercial.

David Tench Tonight. 2006 comedy talk show hosted by a computer generated host who was motion captured in real time. The guy who "played" David Tench didn't have experience hosting a show, wasn't great at improv, and was laboured with an American accent that he couldn't consistently keep up. Attempted to be edgy in an "oh my God, only a wacky cartoon could say that!" way, but tanked very, very hard. It was so expensive to produce that they couldn't justify axing it, so it staggered to the end of its run in a graveyard slot and was quietly forgotten. Here he is trying to get The Wiggles to talk about the Iraq war.

[A Hat Like That]

2.4 Children was Chiswick, I think.

filmed in Reading

[famethrowa]

I'll add some Australian ones.

Ahh there's some very foggy memories coming back here!

The Bob Morrison Show. Very much in the Hey Dad lame family comedy almost kid's show thing, all I remember is the "dog's eye view" thing.

Eagle & Evans. Might not have watched this at all, but I remember the "Evans" guy really annoying me just by his smug appearance

Con's Bewdiful Holiday Videos. Cuppla days! Doesn't matter! I no complain.... Watched this once, just crappy home video clips with voice over. Stretched way beyond breaking point.

David Tench Tonight. Awful unlikeable self-satisfied garbage, basically Andrew Denton annoying everyone even more than usual.

[willbo]

I've always tried to remember the name of an American show - a really low budget, scruffy, chat show - that was shown on C4 in the late 90s or early 00s (I know it was filmed around 1997, a couple years before C4 showed it, because of the "new" albums/films the celebs they had on mentioned).  It was basically a Howard Stern (or early Graham Norton) type show, hosted by typical Kevin Smith type stoners (chubby, bearded, old stained shirts, vulgar humour, porn stars in bikinis hanging round to be flirted with). It was filmed in a really cheap looking, small, simple, studio with old sofas.

They had Blink 182 on once episode and had them shave a porn star guest's hairy groin (she had a bikini on) as part of some joke about teaching men how to shave bodies.  I've looked at a complete list of shows Blink 182 appeared in around then, and the closest thing I can see is MTV's Oddee, though Youtube clips of Oddee look a little more slick and high budget than this show. It was crap, it's just driving me nuts that I can't remember the name.

There was that other US show, on around the same time, of a nerdy young man who lived with his parents hosting a chat show in his living room. I always forget his name too. It was on late night C4 around the same time.

[BeardFaceMan]

Sounds a bit like Colin's Sleazy Friends. Colin Malone also appeared in Seinfeld and Mr Show around that time.

[willbo]

Sounds a bit like Colin's Sleazy Friends. Colin Malone also appeared in Seinfeld and Mr Show around that time.

Oh wow, it was definitely that, thanks. One ONE member of b182 was on it, which explains why it wasn't on the list. And here's the (blacked out with audio) shaving scene - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVpGuNP7JrE