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Ancient Lewis-Smith review

Started by Hoogstraten'sSmilingUlcer, March 01, 2004, 11:25:59 PM

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Hoogstraten'sSmilingUlcer

If anyone's interested, this is VL-S's review of BES. I know it's rather old, but it's quite amusing  to read his petulant rantings against Morris.

QuoteLive, but dead on arrival. . .
Patrick Kielty Live (BBC1, Friday)

We at Channel 4 wish to make clear our continued and wholehearted support for the comedy series Glass Eye. This week, our middle-aged, enfant terrible presenter will be satirising the hysterical way in which the media treat cancer, by showing shocking yet profound scenes of baby coffins, necrophiliac bestiality, and submarines anally pleasuring a dying whale caught in a trawler's net, and even though the programme won't actually be funny, viewers should laugh immoderately and repeat the word "genius" at regular intervals if they don't want to be regarded as hopelessly naive and unsophisticated.

Glass Eye (so called because it's blind to real satirical issues) will also continue with the fiendishly difficult task of tricking celebrity idiots into saying idiotic things to camera, but its presenter will be scrupulously careful to avoid antagonising any serious, grownup targets. Like, say, the Nation of Islam, on account of Mr Farrakhan not being overly impressed by the Swiftian defence, and preferring a bit of good old-fashioned retributory amputation instead.

Rent-a-mouth celebs and sexual hypocrisy are, of course, legitimate targets for comedy, but Chris Morris's recent attempt misfired so atrociously because he's not a satirist, he's a nihilist.

The likes of Ali G can get away with forays into much more dangerous territory because they're fleet of foot and comical of mouth, but no amount of Swiftian pretension could disguise the fact that, beneath Brass Eye's desperate desire to shock, lay a programme that was targetless and relentlessly unamusing.

His ex-colleague Steve Coogan tried to justify the unjustifiable on Friday night's Patrick Kielty Live, by claiming that Morris "does things from a very moral point of view", but even he seemed to recognise the hollowness of his own words, and couldn't bring himself to say that the programme had been funny (the only defence that could have justified its excesses).

It wasn't, because ultimately Morris is nothing more than Jeremy Beadle with a dash of Luis Buñuel, a sort-of Roy Chubby Brown for the Islington middle classes.

Kielty also reminds me of Morris, because both presenters make me wonder what hold they have over their employers to keep getting recommissioned, despite consistently poor ratings and an absence of discernible talent.

Must be the first time in journalistic history that Luis Brunel has ever been mentioned in the same sentence as Jeremy Beadle and Roy 'Chubby' Brown.

butnut

Quote from: "Hoogstraten'sSmilingUlcer"Must be the first time in journalistic history that Luis Brunel has ever been mentioned in the same sentence as Jeremy Beadle and Roy 'Chubby' Brown.


Luis Brunel - a mixture of these two:



Sorry! Thanks for the article. I haven't had time to read it yet, I had to rush and show your mistake.

Darrell

That VLS review hits the nail squarely on the head, it's nicely concise. Now why did he have to do that other one which made him sound like an injured boy?