Yeah Emma Fryer is great - always loved her social worker character in Ideal, complete with Manc drawl.
Toast Of London - Series 1 Page 2
Quote: Aaron @ October 24 2013, 2:26 AM BSTThe pilot or Series 1, Episode 1?
Pilot from Aug 2012.
I enjoyed this quite a bit - hoping that it maintains the delicate balance of surrealism for the rest of the episodes.
This is fabulous. Just a great cast with good humour throughout the episode.
I wasn't keen on the pilot but I am enjoying the series so far. Although as a big Darkplace fan I kind of wish it was 'Rivers of London'. He wouldn't even need to play him differently, just change the name. They could then have a nice guest spot for Matthew Holness as Garth Marenghi.
Anyone else find it slightly odd that former writing partners Graham Linehan and Arthur Matthews have both written sitcoms in the last year about aging out of work actors?
Linehan: Count Arthur Strong
Matthews: Toast of London
I wonder if it's just a coincidence or maybe they had a vague idea of writing something like this when they were working together years ago.
As Count Arthur Strong is a well established comedy character who's been around and successful for at least a decade without Linehan's input, I think it safe to put it down to coincidence.
I think Matt Berry might be slightly put out to be compared to the age of the Count.
Looks like it could be good with Matt and Doon.
When was the pilot?
It's one of those late night sitcoms that Channel 4 have always done well. I only realised last night that Arthur Matthews was behind this, so I think he's finally atoning for Hippies.
Episode two was a lot better than episode one. I like it now.
I like Toast's retro kitchen.
I like Toast.
Quote: Ben @ October 28 2013, 10:04 PM GMTI like Toast.
Quote: sglen @ October 28 2013, 9:56 PM GMTEpisode two was a lot better than episode one. I like it now.
This is my first post, and I have just registered on this site.
Funnily enough I registered purely to say how disappointed I was with Episode 2 of Toast on Sunday.
I thought Episode 1 was wonderful. It reminded me so much of Father Ted, what you might call a "normal" sitcom with just a hint of surrealism (influence from Arthur Matthews perhaps?).
Example of surreal things that made me laugh in Episode 1 were the girl who was upset that Toast did not want to see her any more purely because she had almost murdered her previous boyfriend, the blood shaped body on the carpet in the girls bedroom, the girl throwing the supermarket trolley in the canal, the Bruce Forsyth "lookalike" with the one black hand, the girl who was the hoarder and so on.
But I was so disappointed in Episode 2.
I had found the pilot on the internet and had not enjoyed that very much and Episode 2 seems to have gone back to the "style" of the pilot rather than being like Episode 1.
If you have not seen any of them then it is difficult to explain the difference in the two styles, but the Pilot and Episode 2 seem to be like a "standard" story based sitcom, with people being slightly eccentric, but Episode 1 was rather like Father Ted, a "normal" sitcom with just enough "off the wall" events happening to keep it interesting.
I just wonder how much influence Arthur Matthews had? Was the series mostly written when he came on board, and he had a large influence on Episode 1 (rewrote part of it), but less influence on the Pilot and Episode 2.
I also wonder if Episode 1 was actually filmed first or was it filmed as a middle episode but then moved to Episode 1 to try to get a larger audience?
P.S. I also found that watching the pilot gave a good introduction to the characters, something totally missing if you went straight into Episode 1 without seeing the pilot.
Why is Toast living with another actor, why does he hate Purchase, why is he in that terrible play are all revealed in the Pilot.
Quote: Alan Carpenter @ October 30 2013, 1:09 PM GMTThis is my first post, and I have just registered on this site.
Funnily enough I registered purely to say how disappointed I was with Episode 2 of Toast on Sunday.
I thought Episode 1 was wonderful. It reminded me so much of Father Ted, what you might call a "normal" sitcom with just a hint of surrealism (influence from Arthur Matthews perhaps?).
Example of things that made me laugh in Episode 1 were the girl who was upset that Toast did not want to see her any more because she had almost murdered her previous boyfriend, the blood shaped body on the carpet in the girls bedroom, the girl throwing the supermarket trolley in the canal, the Bruce Forsyth "lookalike" with the one black hand, the girl who was the hoarder and so on.
But I was so disappointed in Episode 2.
I had found the pilot on the internet and had not enjoyed that very much but Episode 2 seems to have gone back to the "style" of the pilot rather than being like Episode 1.
If you have not seen any of them then it is difficult to explain the difference in the two styles, but the Pilot and Episode 2 seem to be like a "standard" sitcom, with people being slightly eccentric, but Episode 1 was rather like Father Ted, a "normal" sitcom with just enough "off the wall" events happening to keep it interesting.
I just wonder how much influence Arthur Matthews had? Was the series mostly written when he came on board, and he had a large influence on Episode 1 (rewrote part of it), but less influence on the Pilot and Episode 2.
I also wonder if Episode 1 was actually filmed first or was it filmed as a muddle episode but then moved to Episode 1 to try to get a larger audience?
Interesting, because I think this is why I liked Episode 2 better! I found Ep 1 to be too much of a 'standard sitcom' with random good bits thrown in (like the corpse-shaped blood stain) but the hoarding was utterly predictably (you know exactly what will happen when she says "I'll need to tidy up" on the date) and I felt that the beautiful African hand was not properly followed through. I also found the whole "worst actor" award a bit humdrum and obvious. So to me, it was just TOO standard.
But in the second episode there was a bit more wackiness and less overused plot lines. It felt like a show that was properly original to me.
It's interesting to find someone with the exact opposite views, though!