Chris Morris (I)

The best film about Islamic terroists is a comedy

Chris Morris' Four Lions, released four years ago, skewers the pointlessness and confusion of wannabe jihadists.

Chris Morris's magnificent series of self-fulfilling prophecies reached its peak with its paedophilia special, spoofing kneejerk tabloid hysteria and corralling dumb celebrities to spout utter tosh (or "Nonce Sense", if you prefer) about how paedophiles share DNA with crabs. A media storm duly followed - the Daily Star's criticisms appearing next to photos of 15-year-old Charlotte Church looking "chest swell" - punctuated by politicians pompously denouncing the programme before having to admit that they hadn't actually seen it. Plus ça change.

In Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle, Stewart Lee made a confession. "I haven't seen Breaking Bad. I don't need to watch hundreds of hours of television about a man who supports his family by doing something he knows is beneath him."

We may speculate about the veracity of that remark. Lee may or may not have seen Breaking Bad but he's smart enough to know the value of good comedy. In fact, his weakness is a need to be too smart, a flaw he indulges in a format framed with a postmodern confessional in which Chris Morris pretends to be interrogating him, or at least lending a therapeutic ear to his comedic insecurities.

Lee protests too much, as he surely knows, and he might be better advised to park his vehicle and just deliver the comedy straight. Because, actually, he's a brilliant stand-up. You might call him fearless, except that all his jokes seem to be based on fearful self-loathing.

He is self-deprecating in the extreme, passive-aggressive and self-abusive, and - here's the scary bit - frighteningly truthful. Yes, he is capable of a baroque flourish, comparing himself, for example, to a "parasitical worm in a cat's anus", but his reflections on the other assorted horrors of middle-aged maleness are calibrated with precision. He is also one of the few comedians who understands the comic potential of the name "Andrew Graham-Dixon", though the market for routines about the presenter of The Culture Show is probably quite limited.

Radio Times review

Stewart Lee is on nasty, bilious form tonight. A long routine about how much he hates dogs is almost self-sabotaging. But then he later implies it was all designed to mock that sort of routine anyway. When he's like this, you'd be hard pressed to argue with someone who found him insufferable, but then the mini-interview segments with Chris Morris make exactly that point.

Similarly, Lee talks straight down the camera lens to address us at home several times ("You can carry on watching if you like, but you need to raise your game"), then has Morris berate him for doing so. All of this would be too self-referential to bother with, if it weren't also funny, inventive and acutely observed. And who else would imagine a stand-up routine aimed at a roomful of oligarchs?

Blue Jam: An ethereal mix

Chris Morris's radio gem Blue Jam starts not with a bang, but a sob.

Have you been watching ... Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle?

The casting of Chris Morris in the third series of Comedy Vehicle has made a brilliant show even better. But do you adore or abhor clever clogs comedian Stewart Lee?

Radio Times review

Another excellent cameo from Chris Morris as a ruthless inquisitor allows Stewart Lee to bask in his navel-gazing style from the get-go tonight. But satire is far from the "cry of the loser" in the first half of Lee's set. He's on top form with a biting take on Margaret Thatcher's death, tax and the current state of the political parties - garnering big laughs as well as the temporary mass liberal consensus he claims to strive for.

The standard slips a little in the second half, where he returns to hammer-it-home tactics to explain to us what satire is. Turns out it's the same as ordinary reality, "but with animals". It seems Lee has decided that animals are unequivocally funny, and so he's shoehorning them in at any opportunity. It works.

Radio Times review

As the series that forms the BBC's sole bastion of alternative comedy continues, Lee deconstructs the idiocy of false nostalgia and knee-jerk xenophobia by examining Ukip's fears that Britain is about to be "swamped" by Bulgarian immigrants.

While observing that the Bulgarians are merely the latest scapegoats in an eternal stampede of small-minded cultural hysteria, he takes familiar bigoted arguments to their absurd conclusions. It's typically audacious stuff: when was the last time you found a reference to the ancient Beaker People in a stand-up comedy routine?

Meanwhile, hostile interrogator Chris Morris takes the crumpled comedian to task over his disingenuous methods and dwindling sense of purpose. Morris simply shaking his head in mute dismay is one of the funniest moments in the whole episode.

And watch out for a truly bizarre filmed epilogue starring those twin titans of cult character comedy, Kevin Eldon and Paul Putner.

Technology, manipulation and mischief in Blue Jam

Lucian Randall, the writer and Chris Morris biographer reflects on the how technological advances fed the creative sound of the cult series.

Richard Ayoade interview

Richard Ayoade talks about The Double, Chris Morris and his future plans.