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!

Two Pints Series 7 is coming soon

It has been a little while but it looks as though Two Pints Series 7 is going to be worth the wait judging by the episode that I saw being recorded last night.

There are some cast changes this time, as can be seen from the cover of the programme shown here. Johnny has gone, Munch is back and there's a new barman at The Archer. There have been some major changes to some of the characters' lives but that does not really change things, it's the characters themselves and their interactions that make the humour.

Watching show recordings is always fun because of the insights it gives you on the actors and their characters. Gaz/Will messed up and play-acted the most (as usual), Louise/Kathryn was flawless and Donna/Natalie called us all something very rude beginning with "c" for sympathising with Gaz's wish to see more of Corinthian!

There were quite a few retakes last night and little pre-recorded material (only one short scene was shot on location) so the 1/2 hour show took over 2 hours to record, which meant all the more fun for us the audience. I just hope that I get tickets to go again in January.

Mixed feelings about Grownups

I went to see Grownups being recorded again on Sunday and came away happy but not delighted. (This is what I thought last time)

The show was a little confusing in that the episode I saw was earlier in the series than the one that I saw last week. So people who were engaged last week had hardly met this. The plot seemed rather thin (Michelle getting married just so that her new flatmate would think she was mature) as did the characterisation, only Michelle and Grant seemed like remotely believable people.

There was a little less slapstick this time but some of the main jokes were visual, e.g. Michelle's favourite teddy bear getting shot and Claire wearing a "I do anal" sign. From this you will also guess that the humour is unsubtle and not very clever.

Sheridan Smith must also be wondering how many times Susan Nickson is going to make her wear a wedding dress without her actually getting married (that's 3 times in Two Pints and now also in Grownups).

The warm-up man, Patrick Monahan, stole the show, again. It was almost like watching two shows in the same place at the same time. The floor manager frequently had to tell Patrick to be quiet as he was still doing his stuff while they were ready to record (or re-record) the next scene.

Due to a mixture of retakes and overruns by the warm-up man, it took three hours to record a 1/2 hour programme, some of which had been recorded outside and was already completed. Sadly this meant getting back to Ealing too late for a drink which did not help.

I guess the bottom line is that I am glad I went to see the show but I am not trying to et tickets for any of the other recordings. I will probably watch it on TV though to see if the edited version is better.

Grownups is like Two Pints without the jokes

As a big fan of Two Pints I should like Grownups too as both are written by Susan Nickson and feature Sheridan Smith but the first series did not grab me that much. But then the first series of Two Pints was a bit weak too and is usually dropped from the continuous repeats on BBC3 so I was happy to give Grownups a second chance and so I went to the recording of the second episode of series two on Sunday evening. I was not impressed.

The second series is quite a change from the first with two of the three main characters gone (Michelle's brother Mike and her boyfriend Dean) to be replaced by Michelle's new flatmate Chris, her boss Rachel, and the frequently topless barman Alex.

The "frequently topless barman" is a clue that the characterisation and snappy dialogue that makes Two Pints so good has been largely replaced by visual humour. In the episode I watched being recorded this included man falls over sofa, man falls and breaks table, woman smacks bottom of blow-up doll and man gets set up with fat girl. Lame. Lame. Lame.

As if to prove that Grownups has no ideas, it featured a scene where Michelle (played by Sheridan Smith) gets sacked by her scatty, black, female boss and one of the two episodes of Two Pints that I watched on BBC3 after I came back from the recording (Homeless and Horny) featured Janet (also played by Sheridan Smith) being sacked by her scatty, black, female boss. Only in Two Pints her boss is Louise (played by the wonderful Kathryn Drysdale) a much better defined character.

Luckily the evening was rescued by the presence of Sheridan Smith and by the warm up man who had us all laughing out loud throughout. I'm going again next week, more for the warm-up man than for the programme itself and this time I'll try and remember his name; he deserves recognition.