Harry & Paul - Series 4 Page 7

Quote: lofthouse @ November 12 2012, 6:23 PM GMT

Can't understand how they keep getting new series

Whereas the last series of Shooting Stars was one of the best EVER in its history - yet gets dumped

Friggin beeb

Can't get owt right these days

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The Fast Show is the Footlights of our times: anything related to it, no matter how tangentially, is assured of getting commissioned, no matter how appalling the result. Grass was absolutely appalling, but because it featured a character from The Fast Show, it got eight episodes even though no-one could quite recall the character even being in The Fast Show. The reliably amusing Swiss Toni was destroyed forever by an entirely pointless spin-off.

The Fast Show's genius was in being Fast: the incongruity and implausibility of the characters was either part of the gag, or didn't matter because you didn't have time to think about it before the punchline. Exposed over 28 minutes there's nothing there, because there never was meant to be. The hubris came in thinking that to improve on a 60s Fast Show sketch, you need three (or thirty) minutes of material. The grim thing about H&P is that each of the sketches, taken down to Fast Show length, might work, but extended interminably they just don't. Presumably they don't have enough material, so are spinning it out.

Quote: Tokyo Nambu @ November 13 2012, 8:24 AM GMT

Presumably they don't have enough material, so are spinning it out.

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It's more likely to be budget. More sketches, even very fast ones, cost more.

I have to say that I have been very much enjoying the new series of Harry & Paul. It is far and away the funniest programme on the BBC at the moment, and I am delighted to see that it is back on.

Quote: Godot Taxis @ November 1 2012, 1:47 PM GMT

Simply amazed at the crits in this thread. You lot really don't know shit from shinola.

Enfield and Whitehouse are always watchable and interesting but I thought there was real polish to this opener. Clever writing; 'But I don't look thirty, do I?', 'Cambridge ringroad university', 'wanker's beard' - Inspired acting and business - Sophie Winkleman as 'Nutella' and Enfield when he proffers the £20 and £10 notes in the newsagent sketch or looks too long at the camera as the sweating Dragon's Den contestant who'd left the 'Solution to the world's problems' in the car.

I wonder if you have to over forty to like it, because this is exactly what I want to see on my TV not derivative and superficial wank like 'Hebburn' - two performers at the height of their powers building sketches out of what they find funny about modern life. Perhaps it also helps if you live in London and have actually seen shops in Shoreditch selling 70s music centres for £150.

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Totally bloody agree. Well put. But I'm in my mid 30s.

Quote: chipolata @ November 13 2012, 10:53 AM GMT

It's more likely to be budget. More sketches, even very fast ones, cost more.

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I think it's just down to pure laziness, how many times can you miss the goal before you get relegated, it's kak.

Quote: chipolata @ November 13 2012, 10:53 AM GMT

It's more likely to be budget. More sketches, even very fast ones, cost more.

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I imagine you could record several short sketches at one location and simply chop them into pieces later. Any runners could be made that way, and bits of them used throughout the series.

Quote: Tokyo Nambu @ November 13 2012, 8:24 AM GMT

Grass was absolutely appalling, but because it featured a character from The Fast Show, it got eight episodes even though no-one could quite recall the character even being in The Fast Show.

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He was the pub's self-crowned "expert" on fruit machine strategy who used to come over and offer his advice to anybody who was playing the fruit machine.

Ok, it's not that good, but we are half way through the run and apparantly we are all still watching it. Is it out of respect for a couple of past masters, or are we all naive enough to think that somehow it will improve on the next episode? I'm not sure.

I enjoyed about half the sketches and didn't hate any of them.
That's a hit in my book.
"Celebrating like an Arab" was brilliant.

I'm not hating this series by any stretch of the imagination. I'm glad it's on.

Quote: DougWonnacott @ November 14 2012, 1:41 PM GMT

Ok, it's not that good, but we are half way through the run and apparantly we are all still watching it. Is it out of respect for a couple of past masters, or are we all naive enough to think that somehow it will improve on the next episode? I'm not sure.

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I think I watch it because it's on. Like most of British telly, I don't really enjoy it but I'm too much of a lazy, consumerist, brainwashed idiot to actually go and do something useful with my life.

It also helps that there's f**k all else on at that particular time.

Quote: Renegade Carpark @ November 14 2012, 6:48 PM GMT

I think I watch it because it's on. Like most of British telly, I don't really enjoy it but I'm too much of a lazy, consumerist, brainwashed idiot to actually go and do something useful with my life.

It also helps that there's f**k all else on at that particular time.

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"You watch it because it's on"????

Jeez, switch it off, and watch a DVD of Black Adder, Porridge, Fawlty Towers, or The Good Life. Let the BBC know Harry and Paul is shite!!!

Quote: Charlie Boy @ November 14 2012, 8:24 PM GMT

????

!!!

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You're really going to town on the punctuations Charlie Boy. It's a rubbish sketch show aimed at elderly fans of Enfield and Whitehouse, there's no need to become so passionately upset.

Loved the Arabs celebration.

The Scottish bloke in the pub saying everything is better up there resonates with me.

I can foresee this show becoming a cult anti-joke hit of some sort. Next year when the series is repeated on a late night slot, someone will make a post along the lines of "Initially I didn't like this show but on the second viewing it really shines through as a work of genius by two talented performers who could teach the current generation a thing or two".

But I ain't gonna put a wager on it

Quote: Lee @ November 16 2012, 1:18 PM GMT

I can foresee this show becoming a cult anti-joke hit of some sort. Next year when the series is repeated on a late night slot, someone will make a post along the lines of "Initially I didn't like this show but on the second viewing it really shines through as a work of genius by two talented performers who could teach the current generation a thing or two".

But I ain't gonna put a wager on it

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You may have a point there, so terrible it's good. Stranger things have happened.