Sheep at White Bear Theatre was nicely strange

The new White Bear Theatre is an attractive place in a convenient location for me so it is towards the top of my places to look when free evenings come up, as one did this Tuesday, and a humble £15 secured a ticket for Sheep. It sounded like an odd play, it was about somebody who had not slept for days and who had strange visitors, and I love odd plays.

It was also written by David Cantor who had Two Pints ... amongst his credits (admittedly it was Series 9) which was always going to appeal to me.

My route there was a simple one, train from Teddington to Vauxhall then a short walk of about fifteen minutes. For reasons I never understood, the play started at 7pm, despite being 90 minutes straight through, so my even feast was a pastie procured at Vauxhall Station. Not for the first time.

The theatre was set up with seating on two sides of a square and I took a seat in the middle of one side while everybody else piled into the other side. I felt like nobby-no-mates for a while but a few people came and sat on my side eventually. In the end the house was pretty full on what was its first night.

The stage was set as the living room in a flat and that is where everything happened. This was Dexy's flat and he was the one who could not sleep. He was visited by two friends. First an outrageous bon vivant who spent his nights clubbing with the rich and famous and then a sedate bus driver keen on board games. The fourth character was unseen out of the window, she was clearly a prostitute but Dexy tried to read something positive into her loitering and then going off in cars.

Then things got a little weird.

It could have been it-was-all-a-dream but that is an unlikely guess. Gradually we heard things about Dexy and his life that contradicted what we had heard before. A gangster was prominent. Dexy was as confused as the rest of us until and ending was reached, and that did not give too much away either.

The strength of the entertaining story came from the strong characters.

The woman, who came into the room later, was wearing a bright red dress and I hope that was a reference to, or at least a homage to, The Matrix. It certainly suited the uncertainty and artificiality of what we were seeing.

There were plenty of nice moments along the way and some of these carried the Two Pints ... house style of unexpected two liners. It was also a funny play.

Sheep was both odd and funny, as I hoped it would be. Job done.

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 :-)

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 is back on Sunday and I'll be there!!

Series 7 of the fabulous Two Pints of Lager and ... starts this Sunday on BBC Three at 9pm.

The first episode is being shown live and I am delighted to say that my tickets arrived this morning so I'll be there.

What fun!

The rest of the series has already been filmed and I went to a recording of one of the episodes in early December. On the evidence of that episode the new series is going to be as good as it ever was.

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.

Piggy Goes Oink

When I started this blog I thought that I would be writing lots of stuff about being a school governor, Knowledge Management, politics, architecture, travel, etc., but here's another post on Two Pints...!

It's Sunday evening and I've got back from the pub just in time to catch the double bill on BBC Three, it's the start of series 4 and I'm about to watch the mega-classic "Piggy Goes Oink". Wicked!

I am very pleased that somebody very senior at the BBC is reading this blog; obviously they have read my last entry on Two Pints ... so the last episode of series 6 has been followed by the first episode of series 3, which I said was the high point of the six series.

More pints ...

The Guardian cartoon "Clare in the community" has recognised Two Pints' domination of BBC 3. I think that this is a good thing because I do not have to buy the DVDs :-)

Read more of the excellent Clare in the community here.

Two Pints ...

Two Pints .... may well be the most often broadcast programme on BBC ever! I'm not sure why that is but I'm not complaining and have been known to watch four episodes in an evening.

Why watch it?

Well, to be simplistic, it's very funny.

Most of the humour comes from the characters and the very rich dialogue, there's something funny in almost every line - and there are lots of lines!

I just like the little throw-aways that litter the scripts, e.g. "I'm so happy I could kick a puppy".

It's hard to pick out favourite bits because there are just so many but I can possibly narrow it down a little to the end of Series 3 and the start of Series 4. I can watch any of these episodes anytime, which is just as well given the bizarre way that the BBC repeats them.

Full details of the cast and summaries of all 54 episodes across 6 series can be found here.