Stewart Lee on Radcliffe and Maconie today. There's a bit about Comedy Vehicle...
Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle - Series 3 Page 4
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Thought the first episode was great. He's such a different act to anyone else I've seen. It inspired me to SOMEHOW OBTAIN a few of his stand-up recordings to watch, I can never remember which ones I've seen before. I feel like his act has really come into its own over the last couple of years or so. That one where he went on for ages about insects or something didn't grab me.
I've tried to like him but he just doesn't do it for me. I think he fancies himself as deep and intellectual and he thinks he's oh so clever, the sort who'd say that you're thick if you don't get his humour. Disappointing.
It is important to remember most standups are playing a character when they're on stage, he isn't really like that.
You never can tell with some people. Steve Coogan appears to be turning in to Partridge!
It's the UKIP episode tonight. Anyone who's been following reviews of Much Astew will know about his reductio ad absurdum ironic condemnation of immigration. It should still be good to see it actually performed, as opposed to just reading about it, though.
I rewatched the first episode of series 1 the other night and the sketches didn't seem as horrific as I recall. Much prefer the Iannucci/Morris interviews though.
Did you hear about that subtitling gaff?
It's starting soon, if you're bothered and had forgotten.
Very funny this week with plenty of laugh out loud moments. The sketch at the end was hilarious too aside from the cheap CGI.
The weakest, least original, lease well-constructed (and crucially, the least funny) episode of Comedy Vehicle ever - for me.
Not a supporter of UKIP, but he tiredly misrepresented their position whilst letting-off the mainstream parties for their confused and hypocritical positions on immigration. This was a standard of material even Marcus Brigstocke could produce - and probably has done.
The Chris Morris bits were quite good, but this was a shooting-fish-in-a-barrel type of set and suggests that Lee - once my comedy hero - is "a dying light failing to illuminate even himself, as his somewhat pathetic talent candle begins to burn-out, becoming ever more short, soft and stubbly."
(My own quote, written solely for the potential addition to Stew's paranoia scrapbook.)
Based solely on my displeasure for this one episode, I shall now forget all the joy and laughter Stew has given me and will start a Facebook campaign with the single purpose of stripping him of his BAFTA awards!
However, will be tuning-in next week and hoping for some laughs!
I've been losing interest since last series. It still has funny moments but feel the act is growing stale and there's been no evolution. The first series and his early stand up DVDs I would laugh from start to finish, now it's one or two laughs per show. I'll keep watching but if I miss an episode it won't bother me
It was a very good call back at the end though
Yep, not great tonight. The cab driver repetition and constant 'Nothing' song were interminably dull segments of pointless time wasting.
I also found the whole thing a little hypocritical - the man works in the most closeted, racist, non-inclusive industries in Britain - comedy and television.
The irony of when he said 'If you tune in and this show is dubbed in Polish with Romanian subtitles' - I bet if the best and brightest Bulgarian comedians were coming over to the UK and taking away his stand up spots and television shows, he might have a different spin on the subject. Luckily, British xenophobia and intolerance for foreign accents is keeping him in a job.
His kids might go to a multi-ethnic nursery, but I've yet to see a black comedian on his Comedy Vehicle - as either interviewer or sketch performer. Forget black, how about a Polish performer or even a British Asian? His all white audience in the studio might enjoy seeing a bit of diversity.
Maybe I'm being unfair, he might have loads of multi-cultural people working behind the scenes, I'll just quickly IMDB the show...Producers, Executive Producers, camera operators...oh wait, I was wrong, there's a Wailoon Chung as Electrician. Sanity has been restored and hypocrisy avoided.
I guess it's easy to champion mass immigration and deride UKIP when you're not personally effected by immigration in your most ivory of towers. And as always with those who attack UKIP, no mention or criticism of the policies, just useless spin.
I did enjoy the interview segments, they lifted the show from being a left wing parody of itself and provided genuine laughs and the dig at Paul Nuttall to stay in Liverpool to make it prosperous was almost like a real joke.
I've never really seen any of Lee's solo stuff before. So I watched a few mins just to see what he was about. Now I'm not a fan of stand up, you understand. It masquerades as the highest form of comedy but the truth is that stand up has an awful lot of acts doing slight variations on the same themes, sets and 'jokes', and much of it is cringingly unfunny.
Modern stand up isn't so much about being hugely funny as being hugely cool and popular and having kudos (or was until MM came along). Lee has exploited this and he is probably proof of this. He's done his time out there and has chiselled out his defining style, gaining great kudos from fans, without being that funny it seemed to me, when watching. Maybe I chose the wrong clips.
Nil's visual joke above now makes some sense as does another poster's comments about his mini theses being unsound to start with. They may suit his meticulous routines but they'd be pulled apart in no time in a debate. In summing up, I will liken him to a skilled craftsman producing items that may not be more than imperfect curios, upon inspection, but have value because of his well built reputation.