To think that if Victoria Wood...

[tokyonambu]

...wants people to trust her judgement on what is funny, she should try making some programmes that are, in fact, funny?

Series 1 of The Inbetweeners was hilarious. It is considerably less funny now, although still watchable.

French & Saunders were funny in the 80s, and I liked early Ab Fab and find the Vicar of Dibley mildly amusing. But as a comedy duo, they lost it about the same time as Wood and Lenny Henry.

Jennifer Saunders can definitely write. The problem with Ab Fab was the long periods when she DIDN'T write and JS and JL would 'improvise' to the slavish shrieks of the audience. Yeuch.

I heart Victoria Wood except when she sings, when I start trying to chew my own leg off to escape (apart from "Let's Do it").

I did read that she wrote "dinnerladies" because she wanted to try her hand - she did it alone and it was her first try - at writing an old-fashioned, working-class British sitcom filmed in the American style; with one set and filmed before a live(ish) studio audience in more or less one go. I think it was pretty good.

However around the time it was being made, The Royle Family began, which heralded in a completely new style of comedy and made dinnerladies a museum piece before it was even broadcast. Shame.

We all know that different ages and sexes like different types of comedy. There really isn't one-size-fits-all. My Dad liked Stand-Ups telling jokes. When The Young Ones was broadcast my parents would have been stonefaced and horrified, had they watched it. I used to love Blackadder and think it was the best thing ever, but when I saw it the other day I thought it puerile and the jokes along the lines of "redder than when Reddy the red pixie wore a red dress and sat on a red toadstool" incredibly lazy writing. I guess I have grown up or the style has dated.

VW will always be a comedian who best appeals to women of a certain age and with certain experiences in her past (childbirth, feeling fat and inadequate etc.). I shall never be able to be shown the back of my hair by the hairdresser without thinking of VW on being shown the baby's head during childbirth .

She may well be past her best, but she has had a good long run at the top and still has lots of fans. Maybe the object of her ire was a twenty-something male who was saying that her material isn't funny for the audience he wanted to reach, and she was trying to say that for HER audience, it IS funny . . .?

She has probably been a household name comedian for the best part of 30 years which is pretty good going. I can't blame Ricky Gervais for satirising dinnerladies in Extras, but it will be a lot less than thirty years after The Office before Ricky Gervais is having a hissy fit and saying "If I say it's funny, it's funny!!" (Next week if his new show is anything to go by.)

VW is very versatile and can write serious drama. Perhaps she should do that. And give up those bloody awful songs.

Blackadder will always be noteworthy for the final episode of 'Blackadder Goes Forth', which IMO, is probably one of tv's finest moments.

P.S This is a really enjoyable thread

I think the point of VW and Vicar of Dibley is not to be funny but to give a warm, British, toasty, Sunday night glow. You all have hearts of stone to be so mean.

But I'm sort of with you on Pam Ayres. Yuck.

VW is very witty.

My favourite is
"aren't you pregnant then?"
"Not unless sperm can get through sash windows."

It just sums everything up about the sexless life of a single middle aged woman.

I did think she went off the boil on the last christmas special, it was satire rather than comedy.

Blackadder is both puerile and extremely witty by turns, the puerile bits get embarassing as you get older, but there is still a lot of wit there ("come out sir, or I shall kill everyone by giving them syphillis!"). Miranda Richardson's Elizabeth the first just has to be the comic creation of its time. "Extras" is self aggrandising, self indulgent pants compared to that.

"And give up those bloody awful songs."

She thinks she's Noel Coward. She certain has his audience.

"Miranda Richardson's Elizabeth the first just has to be the comic creation of its time."

And most other times, too.

""Extras" is self aggrandising, self indulgent pants compared to that."

Indeed. Ricky Gervais hasn't got a funny bone in his body.

I so disagree with that - RG is v v funny, I liked Extras. Also it's not IMO just luck when comedians find collaborators who are superbly talented - that's a talent of its own. So Paul Whitehouse and Kathy Burke were visibly funnier than Harry Enfield for most of the old series, Steven Merchant is funnier than RG but it's not accidental that they found great scripts and opportunities via HE and RG. IMO.

her gripe seems to be more about the level of Bureaucracy at the BBC and the waste of money.

"her gripe seems to be more about the level of Bureaucracy at the BBC and the waste of money."

She appears to believe that her programmes would be funnier with better wigs and more orchestral playing, and this could be funded by not employing Jonathan Ross.

The basic proposition is, of course, nonsense. Unfunny comedy is not made funny by better production values, and the greatest television comedy ever made happened on essentially one set (The Phil Silvers Show, aka Bilko). Blaming the budget for a failure to entertain is hopeless, when the problem lies in the script and the direction.

But more tellingly, she's made a couple of hours of telly in living memory, and it was very poor, whereas Ross has for all his failings delivered two hours of television and three hours of radio a week for most of the past ten years. Yeah, l'affaire Sachs was a grotesque lapse of taste, although not the hanging offence that is made out, and Russell Brand is about as funny as cancer.

But what Wood forgets in her rant about Ross's money and (by implication) talent was that l'affaire Sachs happened because Jonathan Ross, BBC employee, was hanging around in a BBC studio late one evening while another BBC employee was making a show. Ross made a fool of himself (and am I alone in thinking that ageing Ross's slavish following of Brand into juvenile obnoxiousness is not a little homoerotic?) and was rightly punished: but let's not forget that he was able to make a fool of himself on the radio because he'd turned up at the studio to be on the radio.

Wood appears to sit at home, write a few hours' material a year, and then strop when she's not told to her face that it's not good enough. Had she been told to her face "not good enough" she'd have been stropping in the G2 as well. Because she clearly doesn't accept, at any point, that it just wasn't good enough.

Oh I think Ricky Gervais is very very funny too. But will his career last 30 years? was my point. It has gone roughly thus:

Smash hit TV series 1
Smash hit TV series 2
Hit American Series
Cameo US movie roles
Starring/directing US movie
Series on Sky Arsend which has attracted nothing but so far

Similarly Peter Kay. I loved Phoenix Nights, could almost say I think it's a masterpiece. But every decent joke in it he has re-used and re-used. He now looks like a one-trick-pony and I no longer bother to watch anything he does. Pity.

If you have a winning formula or style it is hard to move on and make fresh material while keeping happy the fans who got you famous in the first place.

I was trying to say that if VW has come to the end of her massive popularity as a comedian a) she's had a fabulously long and successful run and b) she has a new niche all ready to move into (Bafta award winning screenplay writer). And that's a hell of a lot more than many other mainstream "national treasure" comedians can claim.

Whatever you may say, or opinion you have on VW, the facts are that she was enormously sucessful, sold out theatres, hit TV shows etc, etc. I have followed her career over the years and have great fondness for her, nostalgia plays a large part in this; she's part of the 'soundtrack' of my youth, I suppose. If she wants to have a gripe about th BBC spending or how there isn't really any respect shown to performers like her any more, then she can.

If you didn't grow up watching her shows and are basing your opinions only on 'Dinnerladies' or the Christmas Show, then I can understand, perhaps. Otherwise there will always be enormous fondness for Victoria Wood.

I would literally wet my pants walking home from school recalling ''What price red cabbage'' or my friend Kimberly.

Welcome to the world of Cacharel....

Sorry to do the dreaded self correction thing but....successful

"SoI walked into the Bodyshop. And said 'I want this in a size 8'".

i agree with the article, the bbc should maybe spend more on quality dramas rather than paying their director 800,000

i really don't see what your gripe is with her, do you know her in rl?

and as she's producing the morcambe and wise thing i imagine she knows quite a bit about it, confused by the about of hatred you seem to be directing at her

oh lordy, I do not like sarah millican one bit. V v unfunny.

Oh I really like Victoria Wood though I was never a huge fan of Acorn Antiques.

I used to love the monologues she wrote for her Kitty character (played by Patricia Routledge.) In our house if anyone talks about something being "fun" there is likely to be an outburst of:

"Fun! I had enough of that in 1954 when I got stuck in a lift with a hula-hoop salesman!"

This is an interesting thread.

I've been as fan of Victoria Wood for many years, though almost exclusively because of her "As Seen on TV" series which must be almost 30 years old now.

I think this series was VW at her absolute funniest and though she's produced some OK stuff since (and some brilliant straight writing and ok straight acting), she's never topped it.

I suspect many of her fans stick with her because this series engendered such great affection. She not only wrote brilliant lines, she gave them to other people and created fantastic characters based largely on her observation of the northern working classes, managing to poke fun without condescending, I thought.

Julie Walters is an absolute joy, but it's important to remember that many of her funniest lines or characters were written for her by VW. JW is a wonderful actress but having tried to read her autobiography, I have to conclude she can't write and isn't particularly funny when she tries to do so.

It's a shame that VW peaked so long ago because those of us who stick with her, I'm sure, find some of the stuff she does now unfunny and cringe-worthy. Dinnerladies wasn't very good, though it included some good lines and wonderful imagery (Julie Walters emerging from the caravan wrapped in a blanket and farting absolute class!).

She remains very aware of what makes funny writing. In particular, she has that knack of knowing why some words are funny and some aren't - Kitty - "A shifty looking youth in plimsolls came and waggled my aerial and wolfed my gypsy creams, but that's the comprehensive system for you" - plimsolls and gypsy creams being inherently funny words).

Sadly I think she's just got older and doesn't have the material she had when she was younger. Let's not forget she's raised two children, gone through divorce and depression and come out the other side. I think there's also that element of shyness still remaining, which is why she seems stand-offish.

Having said all of this (you can tell I have great affection for her!), I do think she ought to stop trying now she's almost 60, or at least, stick to writing bittersweet drama because she still does that well eg Housewife 49. I also think she's got an over--inflated sense of her talent now versus her talent back in the day and that wins her no favour.

"She said she was a radical feminist lesbian. I thought, 'what would the Queen Mother do?' so I said 'We shall have fog by teatime'". No less funny 30 years later!

Another Kitty classic:

"One of our regulars has a skin complaint and has to spend three months eating peanuts with the light off"

Can those who crticise do better?

what? are we not allowed to express an opinion unless we have written our own much-loved television shows? that's hardly the standard, pranma.

I think mn has proven that sometimes it is better than Victoria Wood.

The Nighty night woman did something recently with the woman from Spaced, but I read it wasn't picked up beyond the pilot as it was too 'dark'.