British Comedy Guide

Dom Joly's "The Complainers"

I didn't see a thread for this... I assume I'm the only one who watched this last week (and now as I type). It's basically a show where annoying people, e.g. people who do things like clamp your car for parking illegally or virtually STALK you with CCTV cameras - am I right? -, get a face full of roly-poly-Joly shaped justice. I'm pretending to be cool and cynical but there is something entertaining about it. Most of the stunts aren't very well thought out and a lot of the time you just end up feeling sorry for the people Joly&co are annoying, but Joly does have a sarcastic charm the carries well what would probably seem like one of those self-righeous 'exposé' docs (that itv makes when they get bored) with another presenter.

An example of one of the stunts last week was where a man with mid-length greasy hair and a Hitler 'tash under his bottom lip deliberately parks without permission, waits for the clampers then - get this - clamps... HIS car!!! Justice serv- oh wait, the clamper has caught him and wants his details and ID.. greasy hair kind of babbles for a minute before they have enough footage and he can apologise to the guy...

Well, I kind of like it. What does you think?

I watched the first one and thought it was crap. Perhaps it's just me but I get the impression that Joly is slowly disappearing up his own arse.

Oh for f**ks sake... now one of Joly's evil presenters is pretending to be a cabbie and is just driving them around in circles... of course, driving them insane. The manifesto (?) of the show is that 'British people don't like to complain!'... so they hammer that into every prank they pull.

...there was something funny just now where a man tricks a cold-caller by leaving a message that says things like "go on... could you repeat that, please?" But I'm pretty sure it's fake as the recordings are so perfectly timed. Damn you, TV!

Has Dom Joly ever been funny? It strikes me that the kind of thing he does has been done numerous times, by numerous people, long before he came along.

Saw the first one where he clamped the clamper......seems to me that anyone parking in a private car park like they did deserves to be clamped, towed and crushed so i was cheering for clamper man!

Trigger Happy TV is a big favourite of mine, but The Complainers is very weak, unfortunately. The constant repetition after ad breaks really grates - yes, I know what was happening, I've been watching the programme from the start. The pranks were poor as well, only the clamper one amused me. Didn't bother to watch episode 2.

I tend to agree with those saying we've seen it all before. As for Dom Jolly, he does seem to be a one trick pony.

Yes, definitely one trick by the looks of things. It's a bit disappointing really because I thought Trigger Happy TV was ace and he came up with some classic pranks in that. Everything he's done since though... well, meh.

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