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.

A welcome return for Hustle

Having been made to wait two years for series 5 we now have series 6 following in almost unseemly haste less than a year later. For fans like me that is excellent news.

Series 6 carries on where series 5 left off with the same cast and the same slick scripts that keep Hustle warmly back at their roots, in London doing classy scams to deserving victims while the police circle impotently.

Hustle creator Tony Jordan was at the scriptwriting helm for the first episode and he delivered in spades.

Even though you believed (or hoped) that the gang would avoid prison, it was wonderful to see how they did it and there were lots of tense moments and laughs along the way.

And the news gets even better with the release of series 5 on DVD next week (my Amazon order was placed months ago).

After the bitter disappointment of Day of the Triffids, it is good to be able to compliment the BBC on producing some excellent drama. Hustle is a real treat in a bleak schedule that otherwise seems to be lying comatose waiting for the return of Dr Who.

Diabolical Day of The Triffids

When I first immersed myself in adult fiction almost forty years ago most of the books that I read were sci-fi classics by H G Wells, Jules Verne and John Wyndham and I have enjoyed many of these stories retold in other media over the years.

For example, I recently watched the 1995 American film version of John Wyndam's Village of the Dammed (based on The Midwich Cuckoos) and was surprised by how good it was.

And I also loved the take on Jules Verne's From The Earth to The Moon by Warren Ellis in a recent issue of Planetary.

So it was with some joy that I was looking forward to the two part adaptation of Wyndham's Day of The Triffids on BBC 1.

How wrong I was.

The plot, such as it was, was so full of gaping holes and clichés that it actually became funny. Things like finding two small children survivors who immediately start calling the two leads "Mum and Dad", the way that everybody had got hold of sub-machine guns, the amount of time people spent walking through dark woods when they were trying to keep away from the Triffids, and the apparent disappearance of all food and water after the disaster. I could go on.

But for me the real mistake with this adaptation was the minor played by the Triffids. Far from being the things that we were all meant to be scared of they played a mere supporting role to the unexplained and unconvincing evil of the Eddie Izzard character (not from the original book).

Ironically Eddie Izzard's acting was the one redeeming feature of an unbelievably bad programme that simply failed to do any of the things that it promised and unfairly used the worth legacy of John Wyndham to try and justify its existence. If it had (reasonably) not been called The Day of The Triffids then nobody would have watched it and we would all be happier for this.

Enjoying House 5 on DVD

The Evil Murdoch Empire got their greasy mitts on House Season 5 so it has not made it to terrestrial TV and I've been forced to shell out and buy it on DVD. It was worth it.

I'm getting my hit in doses of three or four episodes at a time and these doses are being repeated regularly and I should be able to get through all 24 episodes in just a couple of weeks.

The best bit about the show is the dialogue. It's unnatural for everybody to be able to come up with an immediate witty response or insightful comment but I am happy to suspend disbelief and pretend that these are real people playing out a complex game with us as shameless voyeurs.

And the best bit about the DVD is no adverts! This reduces each episode down to around 40 minutes so when watching it in real time that's a third of the time spent watching something other than the programme that you think you are watching.

House Season 6 is now being broadcast in the USA and my pirate friend tell me that it is very good too. That's a DVD I will have to buy next year.

Hustle series #5

After four series of the Hustle in four years (2004 to 2007) we had to wait two years for series 5 which made its return bit of a surprise.

In the meantime many of the cast had gone to do other things, such as Wanted, Dexter and Bonekickers, so when the crew is reassembled it is with two new members but we also had the return of Adrian Lester as Mickey Stone, the leader of the gang.

The imprint of the series creator, Tony Jordan, is clear and he set the mood for the new series by writing the first episode.

Hustle is a simple concept superbly executed. Each episode is a separate story where they find a deserving victim and con them out of some serious money. But there is always more to it than that and each con is full of twists and surprises. The mood is very much like the wonderful Saint books by Leslie Charteris where wrongs are unwronged with careful planning and panache.

For some reason the BBC seems to have a "no repeats" rule for Hustle so I will have a long wait until the DVD comes out in early 2010 before I can watch this series again. Now that is something to look forward to.

Dexter is intriguing

I when I first heard the idea behind Dexter, police scientist kills baddies who escape the clutches of the law, I was not particularly impressed by what seemed a not very original idea and so I did not watch the series.

Then one night there was nothing else on so I started to watch it (about half way through series 1) and I've been hooked every since!

Without going into all of the gory details (and there are lots of those) the thread which weaves through the series is Dexter's past and how he is trying to both understand it and live with it.

In series 1 the main story was the search for the Ice Truck Killer who we discover at the very end is Dexter's estranged and forgotten brother. In series 2, which is showing in the UK now, Dexter's handiwork has been discovered and the police are now looking for the "Bay Harbour Butcher".

But I find the second plot line equally interesting and more intriguing. To cover up an earlier incident, Dexter has admitted to a non-existent drugs problem and is now attending a group-help program. Through this Dexter realises that his need to kill is exactly like a drug addiction and his sponsor in the programme (played by ex-Hustle star Jaime Murray) understands him better than anyone else, including himself.

It is the psychological element running alongside an unusual cop story that makes Dexter stand out from the crowd and an essential part of my weekly viewing.

I was on Lead Balloon!

OK, so it was only briefly in a crowd scene but I was there!

This is a screen shot from Fax, episode 3 series 3 of the highly recommended Jack Dee comedy Lead Balloon.

It shows Jack, as Rick Spleen, taking part in a radio show in front of a real audience. I was there because I had been to see a recording of The Now Show and they asked the audience to stay on and play the audience in this scene.

I am in the front row on the right wearing a rather lovely Liberty shirt which the lighting does no justice to :-(

Lead Balloon is back

TV comedy is still pretty poor these days, particularly on the main channels, so it is good to see Lead Balloon back for a third series.

Jack Dee plays a comedy script writer who is very self-centred and tries to manoeuvre thinks in his favour but they do not just go wrong, they go seriously wrong.

But while Rick's inevitable downfall gives structure to the programmes, the comedy comes from Jack Dee's dead-pan delivery of very funny lines, which is how he got famous in the first place.

Lead Balloon is a hidden gem that keeps those of us who have discovered it seriously amused. Try it.

Piggy Goes Oink (yet again)

I first wrote about Piggy Goes Oink, one of my very favourite episodes of Two Pints ... a couple of years ago and I am pleased to say that BBC Three still has the good sense to carry on repeating Two Pints ... endlessly and I still watch it whenever I can.

I watched it again last night.

Piggy Goes Oink is episode 2 of series 4 which is in the middle of what I think of the golden period of Two Pints ... that goes from near the end of series 3 through to episode 6 of series 4, Mate Date, which is my absolute favourite episode.

Now BBC Three is being very frustrating because they are not showing the rest of series 4 but, instead, are jumping to the beginning of series 5!? But the good news is that there are strong rumours of an eighth series :-)

Outnumbered repeats and new series

Outnumbered is currently being repeated on BBC Four prior to the showing of the new series.

It written by Guy Jenkin and Andy Hamilton, the creators of Drop The Dead Donkey and various other comedy drams).

The strap line is "the daily rollercoaster of life with small children" but it is much more than that and, typically for a Jenkin/Hamilton script, the dialogue is thick with well observed humour.

Of course, having Hugh Dennis as the Dad does not hurt either but the real start of the show are the young children who you hope are acting!

Outnumbered is really funny and you should watch it.

*Update* The second series starts on Saturday 15 November 9:05pm on BBC1.

The Now Show with extras

This week's visit to a recording of The Now Show had lots of familiar elements to it.

The trip to Pizza Express beforehand; having knives confiscated by BBC security; getting ticket number 53; drinking Grolsch out of a plastic bottle in the waiting area.

Getting the seats in the front row between the mikes used by Punt and Dennis; having some of our replies to the audience question read out at the end; a cracking show of around 50 minutes that will be edited down to 29.

And we had a pleasant surprise to top the evening off.


The Now Show audience was roped in to play the part of a radio show audience in an episode of the third series of Lead Balloon, starring Jack Dee.

In this episode Jack Dee's character makes an embarrassingly (adverb!) inept appearance on a show about language.

We were only wanted for one short scene but we were sitting in the front row so should be easy to spot when it is broadcast.

All in all it was another excellent night out. Thank you BBC!

Top telly

It's season end for several dramas and they are all coming to an end nicely. The Daleks are bit of an easy clue that one of those dramas is Dr Who. The finale has been well publicized so we all knew that we would have the Daleks back, this time with their creator Davros, and that many of the characters from the four new series would be joining the Doctor, but that was just the icing on the cake of a cracking story. Sadly I have to wait a week for the final part and even sadder that is the last series of Dr Who for a couple of years.

Also about to close is Heroes 2. Somewhat curtailed by the long-running writers strike in the USA, this is still proving to be a confusing and compelling story. The novelty of the first series has gone but the new series is flourishing without this advantage, And like one of the main characters, Professor Suresh, I still have no ideas who are the goodies and who are the baddies!

The final series coming to a close this week is House which has now provided four series of rich comic dialogue that more than makes up for the fact that I have no idea what is going on each week with the medical diagnosis; lupus gets mentioned most weeks and I still do not know what it is!

The thing that connect these three programmes for me is that they all know what their respective strengths are, and they are all different, and they play to them strongly. They are all very good television programmes and will be missed.

Silence In The Library

I had high expectations for this week's episode of Dr Who, Silence In The Library, and it more than lived up to them.

The expectations were high because the episode was written by Steven Moffat who wrote some of the very best episodes in the Dr Who revival, including The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances in the first series and the multiple award winning Blink in the third.

The expectations were met as there were all the familiar elements of a Moffat script, including genuine terror (being consumed by your own shadow), plot complexities that keep you guessing (how does the girl's doctor know that the library is real? - I have my theory!), and genuine character development (we even found out things about the expendables).

Swap the terror for comedy and you have Steve Moffat's Coupling (first broadcast in 2000) which was the first time that he came to my attention - and script writers have to be good for me to notice them!

Heroes Season 2

Heroes Season 2 started this week and is, obviously, must-see TV. It is very early days to make judgements but all the good bits are already there from Season 1.

In particular, we have absolutely no idea what is going on but there are lots of people doing lots of weird things that do not seem to be remotely connected at the moment but we know that they are.

At least this time we have the advantage of knowing some of the characters from the beginning so it is not quite as confusing as Season 1 :-)

Disapointing architecture, but not in the north

As somebody with an amateur interest in architecture I was really looking forward to the new series on BBC 2, Dan Cruickshank's Adventures... in Architecture, simply because it has the word "architecture" in the title and having Dan Cruikshank doing the arm waving gives the programme some gravitas.

Sadly it has not so far (after two episodes) lived up to expectations. Again the reason is simple, there is little architecture in it. Instead the programme concentrates on the life styles and habits of different people with means that it is more like the sort of programme that you would like Michael Palin to do.

A much more rewarding look at architecture came from the recent two parter Magnetic North from Jonathan Meades in which he "travels from the flatlands of Flanders to Germany's spectacular Baltic coast in an attempt to decipher exactly what northernness entails."

Not only was this a more interesting, entertaining and intellectual programme but the subject matter, the architecture of northern Europe, is one that particularly interests me. Indeed, the main triumph of the programme was that it explained to me how the architectural style developed and why it appeals. It also added a few more cities to my "must visit" list.

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.

I'm enjoying The Apprentice

The Apprentice is definitely must-see TV and while we are only two shows in to the new series it is already looking very good. And don't forget it's sister programme, You're Fired, which interviews the person fired that week and gives more insights to the tasks and the teams.

What I like most about the programme is that there is real business in it, i.e. it is about buying, selling, pricing, invoicing, marketing, product design, etc. As a result, the programme informs as well as entertains. This is in marked contrast to the American (original) version of the programme which focuses almost entirely on in the in-team bitching and largely ignores the actual task.

The only problem is that the BBC have pitched The Apprentice against the also must-see programme Dan Cruickshank's Adventures in Architecture, on BBC 2, which has to go on the recorder to be savoured later.

Two Pints ... live and kicking!

Series 7 of Two Pints ... got off to a great start on Sunday night with a live broadcast in front of a studio audience, including me! I am directly above the word "Johnny" on the first line and behind the lady in green.

We were not sure how popular a recording of the show on a windy Sunday night would be but we left here at 4:45pm and got to BBC Television Centre in White City and hour later and an hour and a half before the doors to the site were due to open. We seemed to be in our usual place in the queue which I estimated at the time to be around 120th.

A cold and not particularly pleasant 90 minutes later they started to let people into the site but they only had one security x-ray machine working (they had two last time) so it took us another 30 minutes to get on to site.

At that time we were allocated ticket numbers 140 and 141. I guess that we were slightly lower than expected due to the larger number of guests that had been invited.

The good news was that we were given a voucher for a free drink in the bar the bad news was that there was a long queue and we only had 20 minutes before the doors to the studio opened. In the end I managed to get and gurgle a bottle of Carling (?!) and chomp a cheese, tomato and mushroom panini.

We were then led into the studio and as there were only two of us we were squeezed into a couple of seats in the central block. The warm-up guy did his stuff and before we realized it, it was time for the show.

If you are a fan then you'll have seen the show and if you are not then there is no point telling you the plot, so here are a couple of observations instead. Firstly, it rally was all live, apart from one very short clip of Corinthina tied up in his cot. The set was layed out as usual with Janet's house on the left, the Archer on the left and Gaz's flat at the back in the middle. The difference was that they had lots of cameras in place to cover all the sets at the same time, rather than using fewer cameras and moving them around.

Clearly the script had been designed to be recorded in one take with few costume changes and no outside sequences but I was impressed with the risks they took with things that could have gone wrong, such as Gaz's fire eating and Janet catching a peanut in her mouth. I suspect that Donna was meant to catch the beer mat first time though!

There must have been a few other glitches that I did not spot at the time as the show over ran by a few minutes. This was corrected quickly and the repeat later that evening (which I watched, of course) had a few minor cuts. If you taped the first broadcast then keep the tape, it will never be shown again!

The excellent show made all the waiting worthwhile and the evening was rounded off nicely with a couple of quick pints before closing time in Richmond!