gappy
Saturday 17th August 2013 11:57am
Oxford
2,697 posts
Wow. Not only a bumper week of entries, and a real life playground scrap, but lots of good stuff to enjoy. I'm really not sure what I like most, I'm going to have to go through them again.
Funny Ha Ha: This is a very nice gag, it takes a fraction of a second to get, which is always enjoyable (and makes the audience feel clever!). Didn't like it when you added "white", though - "Elephant in the room" and "white elephant" are unrelated phrases that almost mean the opposite. Good stuff.
Mike: The central reversal is pretty obvious, but as is generally the Monkhouse case there are loads of good lines to keep the sketch going. That's a skill - if I write a sketch it has one joke that is just stretched or repeated with ever more baroque synonyms, so I do applaud the talent.
Nick81: I have to say, I've heard very similar stuff before, but that doesn't mean it's bad - quite the opposite, in many cases. This is incredibly tight. You describe yourself as a joke writer rather than a sketch writer, and I think that comes through, it's incredibly economical, but without feeling thin.
Jakob: Quite an odd one. There's no big twist or massive lines, and you think there's nothing to it, but it's just massively enjoyable, and I really found myself rooting for the cheeky chap at the end. Maybe an establishing scene from a film - why isn't Kafka comedy a genre? - rather than a self-contained sketch, but a good one.
Stonked: This starts brilliantly, but I thought the M&S ending was a let down. After line 6 it could have got more and more ridiculous as these old gents worked themselves into a frenzy about nothing, but it swerved away. The first half, though, I do love. One asking for a longer rewrite, perhaps?
Sooty: Strong whiffs of Hot Fuzz, of course, but vastly entertaining. I love the way it turns back on the victim half way, that's very subtly done. Maybe a smidgen too long, and "Daily Mail is our Koran" is clunky, but generally top notch. Also the last line is just perfect. Not a punchline, but an ending - once again, this is a skill I don't really have, so I doff my hat.
Tursiops: Cracking sketch. Simple but effective idea, nicely turned lines with precisely the right vocab, and a real visual kick: the wind-up teeth really made me giggle. I do think the ending could go further, though, I'm sure there are weirder things he could suggest the missing link between as he gets carried away.
I'm going to go for...Tursiops. Just for those f**king teeth. Sooty unfeasibly close second.