Am just about to watch this on iPlayer.
The Wright Way Page 6
I actually thought that this was alright for a first episode. I laughed out loud a few times. The dish washer bit was funny, the tap bits were silly and funny and the shop bits made me laugh as well.
It may have been in front of a live audience, but it was definitely canned laughter I heard.
I enjoyed it. Not as good as TBL for me, didn't really have the ensemble thing working as well. Wasn't bowled over by the directing and Malika bore a disturbing resemblance to Edwina Currie.
Quote: steven @ April 24 2013, 10:22 PM BSTThat whole scene was lifted straight from an episode of Frasier where he was trying to rent a DVD.
I was guessing George Costanza but it was so conspicously suspect as nicked when compared to the rest of the material.
We have all become so used to instant gratification thanks to broadband, social media, instant access TV, smart phones etc. that our brains are now programed to dismiss too quickly.
Holy Hell this is poor. Little wonder the Beeb have hidden it away in a graveyard slot. It's deeply, deeply flawed on many levels. The characters are boring, the jokes laboured, and the only thing I found myself laughing at was the amateurish direction.
It's a great shame because Ben Elton was - and presumably still is - a great writer. I absolutely refuse to believe that Elton had the final say on this script. It reeks to high heaven of a project that may well have once had great jokes in it but has been savaged by overly-nervy BBC producers and came out the other end a battered and bruised mess with most of the comedy kicked out of it. And so in a desperate bid to drag it back to its feet, we have sledgehammer-style knob gags and pitiful set-up / payoff jokes that you can literally see coming from a mile off.
The BALLS UP acronym gag was so laboured that I was literally squirming in my seat with embarrassment. And the awfulness just kept coming.
During a health & safety meeting Wright was talking about a speed bump issue, the speed bump being a few millimetres too high. "Clive, talk me through my proud erection" he said. The joke makes no sense, even in Sitcomland. Who would ANYONE ever call a speed bump an "erection"? I'll tell you who, a desperate comedy writer trying to inject life into a comatose script. You can almost picture Elton hunched over it, sobbing, trying to give it the kiss of life as shamefaced BBC executives look on, shuffling their feet. Elton looking up at them, his tear-streaked face contorted in impotent rage. "You bastards! Why? Why wouldn't you just leave it alone!?"
And what the Hell were the other characters all about?? Wright's daughter seemed to be just there to go "Oh Dad!" every couple of minutes. And her lesbian lover was, again, embarrassing. An off-the-peg ditzy character with absolutely no depth. And as for their lesbian relationship, there was absolutely no hint of affection between them at all. You might say that's appropriate for a BBC One sitcom, but in that case why have them lesbians at all? Why not sisters? It makes no sense whatsoever. It honestly feels like those two characters USED to be sisters in an earlier script incarnation, but then some exec stepped in and said "Hang on, we could tick a box there if we made them lezzers".
There were moments of funny. Brief, fleeting rays of comedy sunshine that shone through leaden clouds of despair. Haig's physical comedy routine involving the malfunctioning tap had shades of Mr Bean to it - although as somebody pointed out earlier in the thread, the set-up made no sense. He could have washed his hands at home in the kitchen sink. Or washed one hand at a time. For a gag to be really funny it also has to believable. If Wright was a stupid, Baldrick-type character, we could believe that he'd struggle with a tap. But Wright isn't stupid. And so ultimately, the joke doesn't work. None of it works.
The first episode of any new sitcom is an odd affair, almost like a blind date. You don't know what to expect, or whether or not you're going to get on. But if you went on a blind date and some horrendous old seventies throw-back with zero personality and a penchant for crowbarred-in knob gags turned up, you'd be quickly looking for the exit.
Great critique, comedylover.
Quote: beaky @ April 25 2013, 10:21 AM BSTGreat critique, comedylover.
Apart from the assumption that Ben Elton had nothing to do with it.
Quote: Badge @ April 25 2013, 11:14 AM BSTApart from the assumption that Ben Elton had nothing to do with it.
Quite. I drew the opposite conclusion to comedylover, which is that when working with other people he's a capable writer, but left to his own devices doesn't have enough internal quality control.
Blackadder can't be gainsaid, even if you didn't like it, but there he was working with Richard Curtis and with a strong and experienced producer in John Lloyd. For The Young Ones he was surrounded by talent, and also wasn't enough of a name to prevent anyone from criticising when it wasn't good enough.
]Here he's cock of the walk, in that no-one else involved in the programme has much of a pedigree and most of the cast and crew are probably too in awe of the name writer to complain about his decisions, assuming he was present all the way through shooting. Either way, no-one is willing to raise the issue of it not being remotely funny, or remotely plausible, or remotely good.
That was presumably what happened in Australia. He needs the critical feedback (most people do), but won't get it without working with his peers. It's clearly happened here.
ETA: one always hates to refer to the Wail, but this nails it: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2314383/The-Wright-Way-As-Ben-Eltons-new-sitcom-flops-Mails-TV-critic-mourns-star-whos-lost-sparkle.html
Quote: Tokyo Nambu @ April 25 2013, 1:47 PM BSTQuite. I drew the opposite conclusion to comedylover, which is that when working with other people he's a capable writer, but left to his own devices doesn't have enough internal quality control.
There's a big difference between collaborating with other writers and working with executives who "hate" sitcoms and don't think humour is a priority in comedy.
Quote: Aaron @ April 25 2013, 1:56 PM BSTexecutives ... don't think humour is a priority in comedy.
*blank look*
Would I regret asking what they think the priorities in comedy are, if not humour? If you're right, it would explain a lot, given the paucity of humour in recent BBC comedy. But what do they think instead? And why do they think like this? Write on only one side of the paper at once :-)
Quote: Tokyo Nambu @ April 25 2013, 2:31 PM BSTWould I regret asking what they think the priorities in comedy are, if not humour?
I wish I understood to try to explain it.
I could share some theories in answer to your questions, but I don't want to go all Alfred J Kipper on you.
What an odd choice of sitcom to make your first post about?
Anyway, I thought it was alright, tbh. Certainly not as bad as I was led to believe. It might be the writer in me, but as I was watching I was going 'gag could be better', 'wouldn't have put that gag in', 'gag works better on paper', etc. Like the whole thing could do with a good script edit. Then, in the credits, no script editor listed.
I can't imagine it wasn't script-edited, but maybe when you get to the level of writer AND producer, you're implicitly trusted to record an earlier draft than would normally be required.
That said, like Alfred, I did laugh out loud at the phone bit in the shop. If anything, it was a bit too silly for me, but that's a subjective thing.
Dan
Quote: Aaron @ April 25 2013, 2:44 PM BSTI wish I understood to try to explain it.
Let me have a stab. Short contracts. Fear is ruining British Television... and they are taking the creative decisions away from the creatives. What is most important is justification not admiration. Cover your backs as the knives are flying from all directions is the mantra. Barry Took didn't have to explain to a quango what he was going to fill an empty half hour slot with... he just gave a bunch of six youngish men a chance to do an ensemble sketch show in a new kind of way. That sort of thing doesn't happen any more. More love required in comedy simply put 