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March 28, 2024, 06:58:04 PM

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The British Comedy Guide seems quite bleak

Started by Famous Mortimer, May 23, 2022, 07:10:07 PM

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Famous Mortimer

I presume I signed up for this years ago, and every now and again it'll helpfully tell me about something I wasn't aware of. But just looking at their most recent email:

Meet The Richardsons, as boring a "sitcom" as has ever been broadcast, is up for an award, and not only that, the two of them are getting a panel show to host.

Tom Allen, who doesn't appear to have had anything particularly interesting happen in his life, is up to his second volume of autobiography.

For fuck's sake, Never Mind The Buzzcocks and Fantasy Football League are both coming back.

More shite panel shows! A comedian being very slightly funny doing something that's not comedy! Extremely unfunny sketches!

Is this just a reflection of how splintered things have become, and how things pitched at the mainstream are just filling space til the inevitable collapse of all non-streaming entertainment? Or does someone really think we need two fucking shows with the Richardsons?

Famous Mortimer

I do think lots of funny things are happening at the moment, and there are great comedians plying their trade, but none of it appears to be captured here.


Pink Gregory

Thing is with the usual 10-15 rotating panel show lot, is that they might be good performers or writers in their own right, but the way they're used for all-purpose filler in any contrived format that one could come up with. 

Small Man Big Horse

Quote from: Famous Mortimer on May 23, 2022, 07:10:07 PMI presume I signed up for this years ago, and every now and again it'll helpfully tell me about something I wasn't aware of. But just looking at their most recent email:

Meet The Richardsons, as boring a "sitcom" as has ever been broadcast, is up for an award, and not only that, the two of them are getting a panel show to host.

Tom Allen, who doesn't appear to have had anything particularly interesting happen in his life, is up to his second volume of autobiography.

For fuck's sake, Never Mind The Buzzcocks and Fantasy Football League are both coming back.

More shite panel shows! A comedian being very slightly funny doing something that's not comedy! Extremely unfunny sketches!

Is this just a reflection of how splintered things have become, and how things pitched at the mainstream are just filling space til the inevitable collapse of all non-streaming entertainment? Or does someone really think we need two fucking shows with the Richardsons?

I read that email yesterday and had the same reaction to it, just looking at Tom Allen's wikipedia page (which is so detailed I can only presume he wrote it himself, or his management company did at least), and his father only died in December 2021, so to be working on a book about it already seems quite grim to me.

dissolute ocelot

Quote from: Small Man Big Horse on May 24, 2022, 10:33:55 AMI read that email yesterday and had the same reaction to it, just looking at Tom Allen's wikipedia page (which is so detailed I can only presume he wrote it himself, or his management company did at least), and his father only died in December 2021, so to be working on a book about it already seems quite grim to me.
His Wikipedia personal life section is bleak:
QuoteAllen is gay. He lived with his parents until May 2021.[32] His father died on 1 December 2021.[33]
I hope he didn't write that himself or his his autobiographies are going to be a little dull.

To be fair, someone who can write well can make an entertaining read out of the most mundane material, but Allen's strengths seem to be as a presenter and bit-part actor.

oggyraiding

Tom Allen seems very low effort. When he's doing his schtick on the Bake Off chat show thing, he reads from a physical script in his hand. You don't get to be a top presenter with rookie behaviour like that. He'll never be a Cheggers.

Ray Travez

Quote from: Brundle-Fly on May 23, 2022, 07:28:56 PMhttps://www.chortle.co.uk/news/2022/05/15/50791/bbc_comedy%3A_what_do_commissioners_want%3F

The management speak here makes me puke.

Quote'Workplace comedies and family comedies... that's what we're looking for,'

That's my luck out. I had my fingers crossed for more 'drowning yourself in a bucket of cold sick' comedies

The latest run of Never Mind the Buzzcocks I think stands up quite well to the BBC version. Davies is a good host.

Virgo76

The British Comedy Guide forum is horrendous.

Mobbd

Leave Orange Mark alone!

I do think BSG has always had a rather midwit preference for mainstream comedy (perhaps anchored in a perfectly understandable love for older telly comedies like Open All Hours and Hancock) and, when mainstream comedy becomes desso, it's bound to take this website with it.

They used to have more content about sightly marginal, more interesting comedy - your Lee and Herrings and your Munneries and whatnot. Not seen much of that for a while.

Quote from: Brundle-Fly on May 23, 2022, 07:28:56 PMhttps://www.chortle.co.uk/news/2022/05/15/50791/bbc_comedy%3A_what_do_commissioners_want%3F

The management speak here makes me puke.

Me too. I've long seen Chortle as an industry magazine, i.e. news for people who work in comedy rather than a thing for fans. You'd hope a "comedy industry" would be a little more joyful or ironical than this kind of cynical but it's been about 30 years since comedy became big business so what are you gonna do? And big business generates its trade journals.

One bleak hand washes the other. As long as the "industry" has this sort of organisation behind it (the management speak, the big money, the risk aversion) we'll only end up with more desso sitcoms, more Richardsons, more depressing editions of British Comedy Guide.

Famous Mortimer

#11
The latest email features yet more news from Jon Richardson, who at least is aware comedy isn't his strong suit so is doing a "travelogue" with his mother-in-law.

David Walliams is having one of his childrens' books adapted into a film. And Leigh Francis is trying comedy again. More comedy-dramas!

Sex Wax

This is apropos of nothing but this thread has made me realise that Tom Allen and that baldie Australian who used to do the judging on Dancing on Ice and got hair plugs are not the same person.

Joe Oakes

Quote from: Famous Mortimer on August 01, 2022, 05:05:39 PMThe latest email features yet more news from Jon Richardson, who at least is aware comedy isn't his strong suit so is doing a "travelogue" with his mother-in-law.

Fuck me, the comedian with an elderly relative formula is the worst thing to happen to British comedy since panel shows. Was only ever funny when Buxton did it, was he the first?

Virgo76

Quote from: Joe Oakes on August 02, 2022, 07:08:35 PMFuck me, the comedian with an elderly relative formula is the worst thing to happen to British comedy since panel shows. Was only ever funny when Buxton did it, was he the first?
The Krankies?

Stoneage Dinosaurs

I've long thought that what tv really needs is more shows where they pay well off comedians to go on holiday.

jobotic



checkoutgirl

Quote from: Famous Mortimer on August 01, 2022, 05:05:39 PMThe latest email features yet more news from Jon Richardson, who at least is aware comedy isn't his strong suit so is doing a "travelogue" with his mother-in-law.

What the fuck is it with travelogue with parents? There's an Irish lad who does that with his mother and it's fucking interminable. And of course Whitehall and his dad. This shit needs to stop.

Surely the technology is there to dig up Wicker and send him round the world.

BritishHobo

Surely it's all just a variation on An Idiot Abroad anyway - somebody curmudgeonly/no-nonsense and not well-travelled is sent to unfamiliar places for comic effect. Six episodes of "I can't believe they do that over here, I'm not doing that, it's weird!"

Mobbd

Quote from: BritishHobo on August 02, 2022, 09:19:23 PMSurely it's all just a variation on An Idiot Abroad anyway - somebody curmudgeonly/no-nonsense and not well-travelled is sent to unfamiliar places for comic effect. Six episodes of "I can't believe they do that over here, I'm not doing that, it's weird!"

I very much see what you mean but I think @Joe Oakes nailed it. Buckles did it first with BaaadDad. Originally Louis Theroux's idea, I believe.

dissolute ocelot

It's certainly not new - Charles Dickens' American Notes for General Circulation (1842) offered a sardonic account of a tour of the USA with his wife, visiting many prisons, hospitals, and the White House.  And Graham Greene's Travels with My Aunt (1969) is a classic of comic writing (fictional, but so is Jack Whitehall's father).

It does seem odd as a popular genre - surely it's not that cheap to make, compared to sticking a comedian in a room or sending them to work on a farm or some other local indignity. But maybe the comedians want less money if they get a nice holiday. Are comedians that reluctant to be on TV that they have to be bribed with a trip abroad? I can understand sending famous actors to look at cute animals being something they'll do on the cheap, but we're not talking David Jason Looks At Some Elephants.

Captain Z

Quote from: dissolute ocelot on August 04, 2022, 04:46:34 PMDavid Jason Looks At Some Elephants

Apparently David Jason was offered the role of Elephant #1 in this.

Famous Mortimer

Jon Richardson must have a friend who works for the British Comedy Guide, as the latest installment has details of - joy of joys! - a Christmas special:

QuoteJon Richardson and Lucy Beaumont's Christmas Sleepover is returning to Channel 4 for a second year, with the couple being joined by Romesh Ranganathan, Tom Allen and Judi Love.

Thanks, people who watch this shower of fucking shite, apart from Ranganathan, who's alright, I suppose. Or perhaps the unbearable blandness is the point, guaranteed to never say anything remotely controversial (or funny) so just keep giving them show after show.

Oh, and "I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue" is now a touring show, with Marcus fucking Brigstocke in it. FUCK

ShadowRaichu

I'm personally not a fan of the forums. They strike me as the sort of crowd who would complain that comedy is too "woke" now and unfunny sometimes.

Jake Thingray

Quote from: Famous Mortimer on November 14, 2022, 07:14:35 PMOh, and "I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue" is now a touring show, with Marcus fucking Brigstocke in it. FUCK

Sadly that talentless fat cunt has been a regular fourth panellist on ISIHAC for some years now, and is why I stopped listening to it.

JamesTC

Quote from: Famous Mortimer on November 14, 2022, 07:14:35 PMOh, and "I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue" is now a touring show, with Marcus fucking Brigstocke in it. FUCK

For legal reasons, they had to call the touring show I'm Sorry I'm Honestly A Cunt.

gilbertharding

Quote from: ShadowRaichu on November 14, 2022, 08:51:00 PMI'm personally not a fan of the forums. They strike me as the sort of crowd who would complain that comedy is too "woke" now and unfunny sometimes.

Was it The British Comedy Guide forum which had some interesting (ie almost certainly racist) opinions about the excellent sitcom Ghosts? I think I remember discovering that in one of the Ghost threads on here.

gilbertharding

Quote from: BritishHobo on August 02, 2022, 09:19:23 PMSurely it's all just a variation on An Idiot Abroad anyway - somebody curmudgeonly/no-nonsense and not well-travelled is sent to unfamiliar places for comic effect. Six episodes of "I can't believe they do that over here, I'm not doing that, it's weird!"

Several others have posted precedents which pre-date An Idiot Abroad, but Clive James didn't even put the producers to the expense of travelling to these places.

boki

Quote from: Captain Z on August 04, 2022, 05:18:15 PMApparently David Jason was offered the role of Elephant #1 in this.
Would have been better if he'd reprised the Danger Mouse role for that one, I reckon.