Comedy World Cup - The Final

I was only vaguely aware of the Comedy World Cup (C4 Saturday evenings) when I got an offer to be in the audience to see one of the programmes being filmed. This came from one the emailing lists, SRO Audiences, that I subscribe to for just that purpose.

The main reason for wanting to go was the location, Teddington Studios is a steady 20 minute walk away. I have been to a few recordings there but these have become less and less frequent as UK production companies prefer to use other locations.

Of course it had to be something that I was prepared to sit through too and this had the word "comedy" in the title and that was enough for me. It was enough for a lot of other people too and there was quite a queue when I got to the studios just after midday.

The logistics worked and I got a seat about three rows back in the central block.

Unlike other panel comedy shows this is a genuine quiz with proper questions, answers and points. In contrast, shows like MTW and HIGNFY just toss feed-lines to comedians for them to grab with their prepared scripts.

The show went much as expected with much off-camera banter, or rather on-camera banter that has no chance of making the final cut for legal and decency reasons. I enjoyed the actual quiz, especially the archive footage sections.

We all clapped and hollered enthusiastically at the right places having been effectively warmed up. You might just see me joining in as I was next to an aisle and was wearing my pink and grey hooped Leeds Rhinos shirt (because we had won the Supper League Grand Final the day before).

I was going to say something like, I know who won but I am not allowed to tell you, but I do not know. Whether it was to stop us spilling the beans or not I do not know but they miss counted the score so both teams were declared the winners at some point. I'll just have to watch it again in a couple of weeks.

Meet The Doyles is not at all funny

That's four hours of my life that I'll never get back. And it seemed a lot longer than that at the time.

The omens were good, the ticket offer promised "a brand new modern, fast-moving family comedy", the cast includes Will Mellor and Warren Clarke, and the team behind the show have worked on the Cosby Show, Roseanne, 3rd Rock from the Sun,The IT Crowd, I'm Alan Partridge and Green Wing.

Add to this that the tickets were free and Teddington Studio is a short walk from home it seemed like an opportunity not to be missed so one wet Friday I trudged along, collect my green armband (No. 64), went back to the pub for a quick pint then went in to the studio around 7:30.

Being a single person, and with a fairly low number, I was able to get a seat in the front row albeit on the left-hand side of the stage. Things went downhill rapidly from there.

The first problem is that, unlike all other TV recordings that I have been to, the sets are completely enclosed so all you can see in the studio audience are the wooden frames. We had to watch the takes on the monitors, and there are not many of those at Teddington.

The question you have to ask about Meet The Doyles is "why?". Family sitcoms are hardly new and the BBC already has My Family and Outnumbered which take two very different approaches to exposing the strangeness of families. Surely a "a brand new modern, fast-moving family comedy" would do something quite different?

Well, no. The family is tradition writ large, a happily married couple, a teenage girl who is just discovering boys, two younger mischievous boys, a well meaning but off-script grandparent and a brother. There is nothing unusual or unexpected about any of the characters or any of the relationships on which to hang any humour or any interest.

Part of the reason for this is that we are told so little about the people, there is simply no cover story at all. Having watched the episode I have no idea what jobs they do, how the kids are getting on at school, whether the brother is married, how wealthy they are, whether the grandfather lives with them, etc. etc. I know a lot more about the characters in My Family and I never watch it!

There was nothing unusual or unexpected in the script either. There were three concurrent plots (the father's vasectomy, the daughter and the pizza boy, and the son's theft from the local shop) none of which were particularly interesting, believable or funny.

In-between the scenes we were kept warm by Patrick Monahan. I've been warmed by Patrick a couple of times before, at recordings of Two Pints ..., but he was off form on this night and was not helped in his attempts to keep us awake by the extraordinary long waits between takes and retakes that made the evening drag on until 11pm.

The one bright spot in the whole evening was the cameo appearances from Warren Clarke as the grandfather.

It's a complete mystery to me how shows like this get commissioned. Apparently it's due on BBC TV sometime in January but on this evidence it will be on BBC Three at 2am and will sink quickly and unnoticed out of sight.

Reggie Perrin Series 2 is promising

Series 2 of Reggie Perrin, the modern remake of the 70s classic, is now being filmed at Teddington Studios and I went to see it.

The studios, not surprisingly, are in Teddington on the river by the lock, and so it is easy for me to get there for recordings. It's little more than a 15 minute walk. I've seen a few things filmed there but not for a little while so I jumped at the chance to see Reggie Perrin with it's great cast and solid writing team.

Martin Clunes heads the cast and, frankly, dominates the show despite the good people behind him. But he plays the lead role so that is good.

He also added a lot to the filming with his bemused expressions at other actors' mistakes and his ad libs, sadly too rude to repeat here!

Series Two continues to mimic the 70's original without directly copying it so there are many familiar features and catch-phrases but a lot of new things too, such as the love interest for Reggie's wife.

The filming went well with only one fit of the giggles to extend the retakes, though most scenes were shot twice for little or no apparent reason.

We had a warm-up guy to keep us amused between takes but while he was quite good I am not sure that he was needed as the breaks were short, unlike at Karen Taylor where the breaks were so long at the warm-up guy got cold.

The humour in Reggie Perrin comes from the situation and the rich dialogue where every word is important, rather than from any overt punchlines or slapstick. This means that there are few audible laughs but the situation and the script sustain the comedy and the drama throughout and the show is well worth watching.

Touch Me, I'm Karen Taylor

On Thursday I took advantage of living within walking distance of the Pinewood studios at Teddington Lock to go and see a recording of the second series of Touch Me, I'm Karen Taylor which is shown on BBC Three.

The BBC says, "this fresh new sketch show offers a raunchy look at modern life – as seen through Karen's own irreverent and lascivious eyes", which I would not argue with.

The sketches are more about situations (late night TV, on-line dating, etc.) rather than characters (in contrast to shows like Little Miss Jocelyn) and the perspective is certainly raunchy; she talks about her "tits" a lot, that's the word she uses. She also uses other words that it would be unwise to use in a blog!

The good news is that it is genuinely funny. I particularly liked the video profile for a dating service where the prospective date said that she liked smoking dope all day and then her phone goes and she answers it with, "Hello. Broadband technical help desk. " The laugh that got from the audience shows how much Karen understand the world we live in and some of the insanities we put up with.

The only minor gripe I had with the show was that the jackpot question on the 3am quiz show was the calculation square root of minus 2. OK, I'd not expect somebody who phones early morning quiz shows to know the answer but when, to make the point, the warm up man put the question to the real audience it was enthusiastically agreed that negative numbers do not have square roots. I did not feel that it was the sort of audience that would appreciate being told that root -2 is 1.41i so I kept quite while feeling sad at the general level of knowledge of mathematics in this country.

Touch Me, I'm Karen Taylor is the third comedy I have seen recorded at Teddington in the last year or so but is the only one that I will bother to watch when it is shown on TV.

Teenage Kicks with Ade Edmondson

Teenage Kicks is being filmed at Teddington Studios which is just a short walk away so I thought that I would go and see and episode being filmed.

Vernon (Adrian Edmondson) has moved in with his teenage kids after a spectacularly nasty divorce. He is genuinely excited about living in their student flat. A rebel in his youth (or so he thought), it is his chance to be young again. Naturally, his kids are bloody mortified.

The ITV announcement mentions "madness" and "mayhem" but this is just an average tv sit-com, think My Family. So not a great night out but worth going to see none the less. On a more positive note, I'm keeping my fingers crossed for tickets to Two Pints Series 7 which is coming up soon :-)

Ben Elton, Get a Grip

Get a Grip is a new comedy show from Ben Elton which will be on ITV in a few weeks and last night I went to watch the recording of the first two episodes at Teddington Studios, which is about 15 minutes walk from where I live.

The format of the show is essentially normal Ben Elton being a long whinge on an aspect of modern life. The difference this time is that the usual monologue is now a dialogue with Alexa Chung (pictured) playing a second-fiddle role as the feisty babe to contrast Ben's grumpy old man. This format seems rather outdated now and has been done much better elsewhere, e.g. Des and Mel, and almost every programme on Radio 5.

As with many of his previous TV shows, the rant is populated by some brief sketches that reinforce the point that he is trying to make. These were generally OK but added little to the punchline that you had already heard.

Disappointingly the show is amusing rather than funny, though it may tighten up in the edits. It still sounds like a Ben Elton stand-up session but it sounds heavily scripted, they even retook sections where minor fluffs made the conversation sound more natural. And Alexa's delivery was particularly wooden. She must be in the show for her looks.

For some reason that never became clear, the set is Ben and Alexa sitting behind desks looking like newsreaders, they even had folders and pens on the desks though these were never used. I would have preferred a more informal setting for the dialogue, something more like Skinner and Baddiel's sofa.

It's a shame that the show is so unfunny as Ben Elton clearly is funny and he demonstrated it again and again on the night with his comments when off camera. He should have more confidence on his own ability and rely less on precise scripts.

The evening was rescued by a visit to the pub next door, The Anglers, which is always worth a visit as it has a good range of beers and a lively clientele.