Glad to be here! I'm from Birmingham, and am a lover of dark, satirical, and cringe comedy in particular. Difficult to put my finger on a favourite sitcom, but if I had to, I'd plump for The Thick of It! Favourite standup comic is a little easier - Stewart Lee, no question. Anyway, nice to meet you all.
Welcome, dyham!
Hi dyham and welcome. Good choice with The Thick of It.
Hello dyham.
Welcome. And I have a stupid question anyone can feel free to answer, or insult me for asking such a stupid question. embarrassingly I've not watched much of any Stewart Lee, and could use a tip on where would be a good place to start.
There are still so many properly famous people and shows I just haven't gotten round to investigating yet but have been meaning to for ages, or am just still totally oblivious to. So much catching up to do. I've watched a lot of fairly obscure weird and sometimes hard to obtain stuff though. And just a LOT of stuff in general for whatever that's worth. I'd like to think I'm not a total noob. I'm just shamefully slow to discovering a lot of things despite how voraciously I binge watch things. I'll catch up someday...(actually, I kind of hope I never do. I like that my "to watch" list is always growing longer faster than I can cross things off of it)
Anyway, I hope you stick around dyham. What sorts of particularly dark comedy do you enjoy?
Welcome,
If you like dark, do you like Black Books or Dylan Moran ?
Or League of Gentlemen, Psychoville, Inside No 9, Nighty Night, Hunderby, Human Remains, Camping...pretty much anything at all related to Shearsmith and Pemberton and Julia Davis. (and Flowers, if you add Julian Barratt to the mix.)
Snuff Box? Does that count as dark? Probably. Garth Marenghi's Darkplace?
I think I'm just listing things that are highly weird, not just dark.
Thanks for the warm welcome everyone!
@Davida
Any of Stewart Lee's standup sets are a great place to start, there are plenty of really fantastic ones. The thing about him for me, besides the really clever and cutting satire, is his pacing - he does it so expertly. That's something I admire in Louis CK as well actually. Anyway, here's a clip from 2013 about UKIP - not sure how familiar you are with the party, but it applies to any populist party's "questionable" views on immigration. I love how he highlights the absurdity in such a hilarious way: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KVO378tjsw
In terms of dark comedy, Dylan Moran is definitely up there! Also, Death at a Funeral is a side-splittingly funny film in my book. I haven't actually watched most of the other ones, so looks like I have some homework to do! Thanks for the recommendations.
Yeah, Black Books was wonderful! I've been rewatching it lately. Have you seen Dylan in "A Film with Me in It?" very dark and very...Irish? I liked it.
Tracked down some Stewart Lee to get started on, thanks for the tip.
Yes, I'm familiar with UKIP. 
Thanks for the clip! I like it.
Is a lot of Stewart Lee's stuff political?
Can't say I have, sounds very promising, I'll have to add it to the to-do list!
Quote: Davida Grimes @ 7th April 2017, 1:43 PMYes, I'm familiar with UKIP.
My condolences!
A fair amount of his material is political, yeah, but he's also really adept at making it clear that he's aware of his 'metropolitan leftist elite' sort of image, so it rarely feels like propaganda. He has plenty of non-political material though - like his bit about being 'annoyed' that James Corden keeps praising him and saying what a big fan he is. That stuff's hilarious.
Quote: dyham @ 7th April 2017, 2:21 PMCan't say I have, sounds very promising, I'll have to add it to the to-do list!
My condolences!
A fair amount of his material is political, yeah, but he's also really adept at making it clear that he's aware of his 'metropolitan leftist elite' sort of image, so it rarely feels like propaganda. He has plenty of non-political material though - like his bit about being 'annoyed' that James Corden keeps praising him and saying what a big fan he is. That stuff's hilarious.
I enjoyed the clip you posted, and it had political stuff. Not my usual go-to subject-matter for comedy, but he is very funny, and I'd probably wind up learning a bit more about politics from watching his stuff, and that can't be a bad thing. I'll definitely give him a fair chance.
Definitely check out Inside No 9 too. I'm sure everyone on this forum has been driven mad by my constantly harping on about it, but if you like dark shows, and brilliant acting and writing, great characters, compelling stories that are each completely independent from one another and have a great diversity as far as tone, and style of filming etc. (it's an anthology series, so new characters and story each week) genuine surprises, and a dash (maybe a little more than a dash sometimes) of genuine horror. Oh and there's comedy mixed into all of that somehow. It's not a high gag-per minute show, but it still has impressive comedic sensibility, and the great thing (well one of them) is that even after you watch an episode through and the twist at the end is revealed, it retains re-watch value to a surprising extent. The writing is laden with clues and red herrings that lead you (and mislead you) to whatever the ending is, and you can watch every episode at least 5 times and still enjoy picking up on different little clues and details each time that you couldn't possibly have picked up on the first time through. It's my favourite show. (you probably could have guessed that).
The first two series' were just put up on netflix, so binge away! (if you have netflix). Or you can buy episodes off amazon or youtube (I think...I don't know for sure, because I can't access them from the US), or you can pirate them....I certainly won't stop you. If you do end up liking it, I suspect you'll like it enough to spring for the DVDs (Blu-rays). Oh, and I think some of the latest series, S3 is still up on iPlayer (but probably not for much longer, so don't miss out!)