Quote: sootyj @ April 26 2013, 6:18 PM BSTHis books and musicals do well, why not take on a new challenge like a screen play?
Didn't he already write a film? Had Hugh Laurie in it, something about having a baby.
The Wright Way Page 11
Quote: Lee Henman @ April 26 2013, 5:27 PM BSTI think it's f**king disgraceful how Elton has been assassinated in the press like this.
Elton has criticised many people over the years, some have been savaged unfairly. But when someone does it to him, you find it 'f**king disgraceful'.
Talk about double standards.
Quote: don rushmore @ April 26 2013, 7:50 PM BSTElton has criticised many people over the years, some have been savaged unfairly. But when someone does it to him, you find it 'f**king disgraceful'.
Talk about double standards.
Two wrongs never make a right.
Too painful to endure. If the lead character doesn't get a BAFTA for over-acting and Elton one for worst sitcom of the year, there is no justice in the world. I thought one of the first rules of comedy was to create characters that people could warm to or empathise with. Within two minutes I had developed a loathing of the nerdy dad. If Elton hadn't have written this it would never have been commissioned.
Quote: Matthew Stott @ April 26 2013, 7:14 PM BSTDidn't he already write a film? Had Hugh Laurie in it, something about having a baby.
Maybe Baby, painful crap. he also did a sitcom on the same lines, 'Blessed' and we weren't
Quote: Matthew Stott @ April 26 2013, 7:14 PM BSTDidn't he already write a film? Had Hugh Laurie in it, something about having a baby.
Inconcievable?
Based on his novel did he write the screen play as well?
Quote: Lee Henman @ April 26 2013, 5:27 PM BSTThey do occasionally take chances. But if you had a million quid (which is roughly how much it costs to make a six-episode studio sitcom), and you were forced to bet that cash on a horserace, would you go for the odds-on favourite or the promising but unproven 10-1 contender?
Horses that have been unplaced in two of their last three races, and pulled up in their most recent, tend not to be odds-on.
Quote: Tokyo Nambu @ April 26 2013, 8:35 PM BSTHorses that have been unplaced in two of their last three races, and pulled up in their most recent, tend not to be odds-on.
Who're you, John McCrirrick?
I think part of the problem (of which there are lots of but they have already been discussed by most of the users here) is the situation and relationships, compared with The Thin Blue Line.
In TTBL the hierarchy is clearly visable throughout, with Inspector Fowler and DI Grim at the top; Sgt. Dawkins in the middle, and the constables and detective constables at the bottom. You could in a sort of way also compare it to Dad's Army, with all the ranks and relationships played between the characters.
In The Wright Way there is none of this. It's just Wright, his subordinates, his daughter and his daughter's partner. There is very little depth to the show, and the family characters seem redundant. It mixes a family sitatuion with a work situation. It doesn't seem to work.
I will admit I did raise a smile during the shop/phone scene, but other than that this show left me cold. One very strong candidate for "Worst New British TV Sitcom" at the Comedy.co.uk Awards perhaps?
Thatcher dies and within a fortnight her comedic nemesis Ben Elton has a new sitcom showing on the BBC. To the Mail and the Telegraph that's probably the TV equivalent of those "Witch is Dead" parties. Unsurprisingly they're having some fun with it. They'd probably have torn it to shreds even if it'd been brilliant.
But it's very bad IMHO - so while their hand-rubbing glee is a bit sickening it's hard to disagree with some of their criticisms. Of the show, anyway.
Quote: Frantically @ April 26 2013, 9:29 PM BSTThatcher dies and within a fortnight her comedic nemesis Ben Elton has a new sitcom showing on the BBC.
Ben Elton is only Thatcher's "nemesis" in the eyes of people too young to remember the period who believe Elton's own propaganda. I doubt she'd even heard of him.
It wasn't like TW3, with questions being asked in the house and offended men punching the presenters out, or even Spitting Image, which was at times genuinely bilious and, being on ITV, had a reasonably sized audience. Saturday Night Live was a variety show, and a rather good one, and a great deal better than that carcrash that was Chris Tarrant's OTT a few years earlier. But the idea that Thatcher was cowering in her bunker as it was broadcast is just fantastical. Few people watched it, and those that did were hardly swing voters. Elton was always a middle class poseur, or at most a licensed court jester, never at the political cutting edge. Of course he ended up a small (and probably large) c conservative: he always was. And I believe in this, as it's been tested by research, that he who f**ks nuns will later join the church.
He was a good stand-up (although nothing like as good as Alexei Sayle, which adds piquancy to their later falling out) but his most well known routines at the time --- there was a time when you couldn't get on a train without someone saying "got to get a double seat" --- were amiable observation, just done at double speed. He was the Michael McIntyre of his era. Trying to make out that he was politically significant is just ridiculous.
That he went on to write (or co-write, or script doctor, or whatever) something as fantastically good, and fantastically subversive, as Blackadder is to his eternal credit. Even one of the series he was involved in would excuse almost anything, and there are three of them, each of them as close to perfect as they could be. But Thatcher's nemesis? Behave.
Quote: Tokyo Nambu @ April 26 2013, 10:33 PM BSTBen Elton is only Thatcher's "nemesis" in the eyes of people too young to remember the period who believe Elton's own propaganda. I doubt she'd even heard of him.
No, she was quite astute old Thatch - she'd have heard of him. I wasn't suggesting he was her literally nemesis in the sense that she was worried by him, or that he might be her doom. But to papers like the Mail and Telegraph he represented - once upon a time - an influential group of people who were an enemy to her and her way of thinking.
Quote: Tokyo Nambu @ April 26 2013, 10:33 PM BSTThatcher's nemesis? Behave.
Behave yourself.
Quote: Tokyo Nambu @ April 26 2013, 4:08 PM BSTYou might say that. But who, do you think, said:
I might and I did. But I said more. Grasp it one way or another as Ben himself might have said, but I don't want to be complicit in your own self amusement as it were. Casting was just one part of what I was referencing but I guess you knew that didn't you?
Quote: Frantically @ April 26 2013, 9:29 PM BSTThatcher dies and within a fortnight her comedic nemesis Ben Elton has a new sitcom showing on the BBC. To the Mail and the Telegraph that's probably the TV equivalent of those "Witch is Dead" parties. Unsurprisingly they're having some fun with it. They'd probably have torn it to shreds even if it'd been brilliant.
But it's very bad IMHO - so while their hand-rubbing glee is a bit sickening it's hard to disagree with some of their criticisms. Of the show, anyway.
Oooh political.. yes Elton was Thatchers nemesis... FFS.
Thatcher's nemesis was Hesseltine. And, towards the end of her reign, just about every major tory.
Just stumbled on this. David Haig is a truly atrocious comedy actor. I gather from this thread Ben Elton wrote the script. Figures.