swerytd
Wednesday 25th March 2009 1:09pm [Edited]
Guildford
7,542 posts
Woah! You don't watch it until a day afterwards and ten pages of opinions bounce up!
Again, quality. *So* different to the normal stuff.
Don't people 'get' that he's taking the mickey out of himself as much as anything else? The futility of coming up with something he thinks is new, innovative, potentially (thought not necessarily) ground-breaking comedy, for everyone else to laugh at something so mainstream causing him to drop to the lowest common denominator by hanging his life by a thread from an 'art-deco' balcony, just to appear popular.
It screws him up inside that the more mainstream he becomes, the less act he has. Anybody who's followed the journey it's taken to get this commissioned/finally on TV would probably understand his frustration. Most of it stems from the fact that he wants to be popular, but on his terms, and by making everyone else in the country more intelligent.
Surely the point of the repetition sketches was that all that is on is shit, but we'll still watch the shit for ages. And even though it was shit, we'll still check what shit's on there again. And again. And again. Maybe it was laboured, but not to do it would have lost the whole point, no? Anyway, if you have to explain it...
Perversely, he's perhaps at his best (and I'm sure he'll hate this) is when he f**ks things up, as can be seen in the 'red button' bits. He's *so* quick to react/jump on his own mistakes with humour, that is probably the 'live' aspect that's missing from the show itself. You can also tell he's thinking *all the time*, when he's starts up about dubbing his mistakes and the impact that would have.
Incidentally, I did agree about Richard Herring's voice being part of his act. But then, why split the money now you've learnt to do it yourself?
Dan