Mitchell and Webb. It won't do.

[maktaitai]

More of a general BBC comedy rant, really.

Even if you take as read, which I don't, that all-male Oxbridge acts are the best source of sketch comedy, haven't you lot at the BBC noticed that 2 front men is not enough competition to produce a funny result unless the 2 front people are incredibly experienced performers, as in the Morecambe and Wise/post-war generation?

Without the pressure cooker development of all that live work, you need at least 4 front people to get enough of a competitive atmostphere going to chuck out the unfunny stuff. Viz Monty P, Not the 9, Mary Whitehouse, Goodness Gracious, League of Gentlemen. Compare and contrast with French and Saunders, Smith and Jones, Fry and Laurie, Armstrong and Miller, Hudson and Pepperdine, Mitchell and Webb, etc etc. The most recent M&W is full of extremely tired stuff that needed to be CHUCKED for the new series, plus, God help us, a sketch called 'Sketches We Couldn't be Bothered To Write'.

Perhaps you could establish a regular slot, say 11pm on a Monday or something, called The 30-Minute Revue, basic stage and live audience only, and send all the Oxbridge double acts to fight it out in a comedy bear pit so that what survives is ACTUALLY FUNNY.

(Sorry, I do know that some of my double-act examples there are not Oxbridge or male).

I quite liked it, actually. Have thought for a while their series are patchy - the Sir Digby Chicken Caesar stuff was never funny, so glad that seems to have gone, but they seem to have a similarly puzzling attachment to the Hennimore! sketches. But there are some sketches that are absolutely great - the Sky Sports parodies and Channel 5 ones come to mind.

Still, I do agree about the over-reliance on male (and sometimes) Oxbridge comedians, not that it's a bias confined to the comedy arena. I'd have to say, Horne and Corden are the worst offenders here for me - don't think they are Oxbridge but they certainly got a sketch show as a twosome without the merits of it being at all funny.

I think that generally speaking, sketch shows are becoming very tired. There seems to be nothing new and most of the good new comedy is coming in different forms.

Mitchell and Webb was shit from the first sketch of the first episode, they're trying too hard and I find them disappointing as a duo. They seem to be funnier apart.

Yes, if I have to watch another Hennimore sketch I may puke.

I kind of agree Pfft, I think they have different strengths and they're working less well as a duo now - maybe the differences have even been exacerbated by Peep Show requiring them to become people it's increasingly difficult to imagine have ever really been friends.

I feel for the big chap who does their straight man work - he must know, surely, that the stuff he does for Sorry I've Lost My Head is about 20 x funnier?

The Hennimore sketches are the best bit! I especially liked the "Go Home" one the other week......

"Compare and contrast with French and Saunders, Smith and Jones, Fry and Laurie..."

Are you trying to suggest that these particular double acts are not funny?? Because I take serious issue with that.

I'd sooner watch them than The League of Gentleman which was more weird than humorous.

And actually, if you want very unfunny, I believe Jack Dee's Lead Balloon was well named.

ahh,Fry and Laurie superb. I love Peep Show too.

M&W have lots of writers, though. I am interested in why you think that more performers, specifically, improves the quality of the material.

Yes I'm trying to suggest that large amounts of the numerous series that those double acts had were not funny due to the endless hanging on to sketch ideas that were great to begin with but which got very, very tired and which someone should have been brutal enough to chuck; or a lot of quite lazy metacomedy.

But no, I'm not trying to suggest they were never funny. All of them had times of being absolutely amazing. I obviously shouldn't turn this into a clips thread.

oh well

Professor, I'm remarkably ignorant about how tv comedy works, but having watched a lot of documentaries and many episodes of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, wouldn't it be right that the writers usually start off with ideas which they pitch to the next level? I guess it depends who's in that level - if it's the performers, then IMO more performers would lead to more competition.

Hi Guys,

Glad to come across a thread where there seems to be a few television addicts like myself

Although I like to watch the odd sketch show now and again, I do prefer my soaps.

I must admit,I'm a life long watcher of Coronation Street, are there any other Corrie fans here?

I would hate to be the only one with a Corrie addiction :0

Yes, they can't be the only ones writing. Though there won't be that many. British comedy doesn't tend to have legions of writers in the same way that American comedy does. Graham Linehan was on the radio talking about The IT Crowd (and Father Ted) and the writers involved with it - how much work it is because British comedy (with it's fewer episodes per run) doesn't have a massive team of funny writers, there are just a few people)

Like most sketch shows I think that Mitchell and Webb has had funny moments and less funny ones. In terms of my personal taste it's a little mainstream but some of the sketches still make me laugh. I think that Peep Show is wonderful and don't think that they have made the transition wholly successfully, though I suspect that many people would disagree with me.

Lead Balloon was atrocious, I thought.

Liz, hello - you might get more responses if you start your own Corrie thread within the Telly addicts topic - have a look at the top of the thread?

I'm almost as remarkably ignorant, but comedy writing doesn't tend to work out quite the same in the UK as in the US. Still, yes, I think that writers or groups of writers put forward sketches that get considered and developed further. But where you have lots of performers I'm not sure that gets madly improved as you just get the performers doing more of the writing in the first place. Perhaps.

I thought the process behind Blackadder was very interesting -- Curtis and Elton wrote the original scripts but then the whole cast worked and improvised and tweaked and polished over a long period to come up with the best final version they could. And I think that showed. So perhaps I am agreeing with you after all... hmm...

I do think M&W were better on the radio. So much of their first couple of TV series were reworkings of sketches they'd already done on the radio and I think they lost some momentum then (and the individual sketches generally didn't work as well as they had done on the radio, IMO). But then the TV audience was much higher.

I do like Reckon a lot (although again, they did it on radio first).

ahhhh great stuff prof

Oh God I'm feeling guilty now. As if I could ever be as funny as any of these guys. And they've probably had a massive budget cut and have had to produce the same series on half the time and 20% of the funding or something.

In fact I'm going to buy a DVD or something. Just to say sorry. For Vectron!

PET-RIL

Ah, I enjoyed the reminder of Vectron.

My favourite line at the moment was from the hostage negotiator and porn writer sharing an office where the porn writer explained that off all the people who could unexpectedly call at the house as part of the script, it couldn't be a Sky engineer: 'They say it cheapens their brand, if you can imagine such a thing'.

The BBC is Oxbridge-centric imvho. They are churning out stuff they think the plebs will like. That's why so much is complete rubbish. It's either patronising (stuff they think people who didn't go to Oxbridge will like) or middle-class, angsty, naval-gazing, self-indulgent shit.

Not that I care or anything

Dh and I hought it was funny last week.
Not so funny last night.

I'm not keen on anything mitchell and webb. Mind you I'm not generally keen on sketch shows. The one exception is Armstrong and Miller - I found them hilarious, although even some of their sketches weren't great.

Isn't it about taste?

CAn't stick the sports parodfies but we loved Sir Digby

Ho hum

Agree Oblomov last week was lol funny, this week not so much. Although I did chuckle at the though of all those MNers who are obsessed with DM in the cunnilingus sketch, they must have been in a frenzy of excitement! Not me - more of a Paul Merton girl meself.

I do like Sir Digby - even without the sketches, the idea of his character makes me smile.