SlagA
Friday 10th August 2007 1:59am [Edited]
Blackwood
5,335 posts
I used to love Comic Strip but watched the boxset and laughed at one episode (Mister Jolly lives next door which was really proto-Bottom, what else do you expect from Rik and Ade?).
The others, even the ones I remember the most as "funny" were dire on rewatch. The Fistful of Dollars parody suffered from inconsistent characters. Richardson played both the sniggering maniacal sidekick and antagonist in the same role - the later unsuccesfully. The Yob, great idea poorly executed - Bad News, a feeble Spinal Tap.
Truncated ambiguous endings (Les Dogs / the Fistful of Dollars parody were particularly awful from a script and film-making perspective).
Unfulfilled character arcs (What the hell was the point of the Cathy Burke character in Funseekers?).
Patchy and inconsistent writing due to the opening of the writing to other Comic Strip members. The iron age village experiment in the university rates as the worst (imo) hour of TV I own. What was the point of the dead man on the pyre opening his eyes? Why did his wife who knew he was dead wander around at the end asking where her husband was? What was the point of the posh couple living in a caravan and the shagging as the village burned down?
French and Saunders wrote a dire Consuella but redemmed themselves later on in the series with some great performances and a good script (forget which).
Ripping Yarns has to be the best stand-alone series, imo. But it was consistent in writing input (Jones / Palin then Palin) and in tone and setting, which Comic Strip proponents can't claim.
