Chris Morris (I)

Last night I witnessed a small piece of television history when BBC3 aired, without question, the worst comedy pilot they have ever made. Bearing in mind this channel has produced more abysmal comedy pilots than a flying school for suicidal clowns, that's quite an achievement.

The aptly named Laughter Shock was quite stunning in its awfulness, so much so that it almost felt like an angry satire on everything that's wrong with modern British comedy. But no, it was real. Horribly, painfully real.

This jaw-dropping travesty was intended as a showcase for over a dozen young comedians, all labouring under the misapprehension that all you need for a successful career in stand-up is amplification and a larynx. Performing live in front of a trapped audience, this smorgasbord of hacks were each given just a minute to make their mark. This, clearly, is an insane way to present stand-up comedy on television, but in this case it was a blessing.

Even in heavily edited form, they were among the most atrocious stand-ups I have ever seen. Lowlights included a loud woman talking solely about her hair, an idiot doing an impersonation of a dinosaur (because his last girlfriend was so old), a "token middle-class white boy" illustrating his cleverness by using the word "semantically" and sneering at people's Amazon reviews, and a hopeless berk performing an excruciating routine about the many hilarious uses for a towel. That he did this while aping the vocal mannerisms of Michael McIntyre merely compounded the horror.

As if all of this wasn't bad enough, the stand-up was interspersed with amateurish sketches ranging from charmless whimsy to uninspired riffs on youth culture and race, and a truly appalling attempt at Chris Morris-like edginess set in a woman's lavatory.

Comedy, like any craft, requires practice and experience before it can be mastered, so if I was feeling charitable I'd concede that perhaps these newcomers were simply ill-prepared for such exposure. Having said that, none of them showed the slightest bit of potential, and I'm staggered that even BBC3 - where new comedy frequently goes to die - thought this fit for broadcast.

Satirist who went in search of laughs in dark places

Chris Morris has carved out a reputation for pushing the boundaries of what's deemed acceptable on TV and radio.

BIFF Review - Four Lions

Following its UK premiere at the BIFF, we sing the praises of Chris Morris' sharp and audacious satire.

Four Lions Review

Chris Morris hits a raw nerve in his take on homegrown terror in which the police are as bumbling as the jihadi bombers.

Quizzing the Lion

Before the SXSW screening of his new satire Four Lions at the Paramount on Friday, director Chris Morris preempted one inevitable Q from the post-screening Q&A. "The most common question about the film is, 'Why make a comedy about terrorism?'"

Julia Davis (Nighty Night, Human Remains) and Jessica Hynes (Spaced, The Royle Family) have partnered for the new BBC2 comedy pilot Lizzie And Sarah, playing two fiftysomething suburban housewives who are ignored by their selfish husbands, but are inspired by the tragic death of a teenager to take revenge.

If you're a fan of very dark comedy, this looks promising, although the "joke" of the trailer appears to the total absence of any traditional laughs and its oppressive, sinister tone. But it's packed full of familiar faces from British comedy (Mark Heap, Kevin Eldon, David Cann, etc), most of whom have appeared in similarly blackhearted comedies; from the aforementioned Nighty Night and Human Remains, through satirist Chris Morris' Brass Eye and Jam.

Apparently, Lizzie & Sarah is being sneaked out on BBC2 with little fanfare and in a graveyard slot (Saturdays, 11:45pm!) because the BBC were shocked by how dark and twisted it is, which is a shame. But I know that fact just gave plenty of people a frisson of excitement. Lizzie & Sarah hits the airwaves on 20 March. I hope it's funny, but in a sick way.

Chris Morris in the lion's den

The creator of Brass Eye is back and this time his subject is Islamic fundamentalism. Expect trouble.

Four Lions Sundance diary

What happened when the writers of Four Lions, Chris Morris's 'jihadist comedy', took the film to Sundance? Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong open their diaries.

Chris Morris and the Roar of "Four Lions"

Perhaps one of the most unusual sights of the Sundance Film Festival was seeing British comedy legend Chris Morris walking around and doing Q&As after screenings of his "jihadi comedy" "Four Lions." Infamous in Britain for his shows "The Day Today" (which helped launch the career of Steve Coogan) and "Brass Eye," Morris is generally regarded as something of a recluse, and rarely gives interviews.

When he announced his intentions to film a suicide-bomber comedy, Chris Morris made his feature- film debut even more of a hot potato than potential investors might have expected.

Surprisingly, though, Four Lions is quite a traditional comedy. It features likeable characters who might have sprung from a quaint Seventies sitcom, the only difference being that these guys make nail bombs, hate Israel and lament the rise of Gordon Ramsay. Set in the North of England, and played by a largely British-Asian cast, Four Lions tells the story of Omar (Riz Ahmed), a security guard in a shopping mall who dreams of Mujahidin glory. Aided by a white Muslim, Barry (Nigel Lindsay), Omar recruits a sleeper cell, then goes to Pakistan to visit a training camp, where he hopes to be chosen for a mission by one of al-Qaeda's emirs. Unfortunately for him, the project goes horribly wrong, and, unwilling to lose face, he returns to the UK claiming that the mission has been approved.

Here the film becomes the stuff of tabloid headlines. Using the format of an Ealing comedy, with tinges of Seventies farce, Morris delves into the shadowy world of terrorism with extraordinary fearlessness, making these incompetent would-be killers appear daft and strangely endearing. Ahmed, in particular, gives a nuanced and sophisticated performance: his character sees his heroism in the banal terms of The Lion King, and rails against the West while living in a nice suburban home, complete with an Ikea kitchen and fittings.

Given that every bomb in this movie eventually explodes, the grotesqueness of such bad taste is in the eye of the beholder. Here in Sundance, where the reality of suicide bombings isn't quite as palpable as it is in the UK, the crowds lapped it up.

Film-maker's comment: "I sort of feel in a weird way that this is a good-hearted film. It's not a hate film."

Why it will be a hit: Morris is at his jaw-dropping best, creating a warm, likeable comedy about a Muslim terror cell that professes to hate the liberal, Mini Babybel-eating West.