RFTP rejection: 'The Reader'

MAN 1:Is that one of those electronic readers?

MAN 2:Yeah.

MAN 1:I hear they're pretty decent.

MAN2:You can download and store 2000 books, get the daily newspapers directly sent to it and look up dictionary definitions instantly - so yes, they're extremely decent. And look, if I click here -

F/X: SOUND OF SOMETHING POWERING DOWN

MAN 2h, great…

MAN 1:What?

MAN 2:The battery's dead. You got a power point round here?

MAN 1:No – we're on a hunt in the middle of the Serengeti. Do you want to borrow one of my books?

MAN 2Sighs) Okay. What have you got?

MAN 1:'Too Much, Too Young' by Kerry Katona, or 'Royal Duty' by Paul Burrell.

F/X:THE SOUND OF A SOLITARY GUN SHOT

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Does this actually make sense?

Hi Flaner

It feels a bit 'vanilla' to me. There's no great spin on it. Feels a bit like it would work more on a topical show, but for RFTP it needs to leap off the page with a really different spin/angle on it.

If anything, I'd make it longer and dwell over each feature of it at a time with both blokes getting excited over it and the reveal is that they're miles from anywhere. Either that or reveal where they are straight away and the owner keeps going on about how good it is and using it to find things out about the desert/jungle/plants/animals and the plug thing revealed with the very last words.

Dan

Made me chuckle.

This is basically a very good sketch.

On a fairly trivial note, I'd suggest you don't need Line 3 (MAN 1: I hear they're pretty decent). Just tack MAN 2's second speech onto his first.

The only significant 'fault' (imho) is that it's set in the wrong place. If they're on a hunt in the Serengeti, they wouldn't be in serious need of leisure reading material. Everything around them would be exciting enough to keep them occupied, surely?

However, if the sketch were set somewhere dreadfully boring (maybe they're snowbound in a log cabin with no prospect of rescue for a very long time?), it'd be a very funny sketch indeed.

I agree pretty much entirely with Roodeye.

Good points. I just needed them to be somewhere where there was a gun close to hand.

At least I know I'm heading in the right direction! Just got to fit all the puzzle pieces together and I'll surely dominate the first sift of RFTP next year.