Frankie Boyle

Too outrageous for Mock The Week, Frankie Boyle has got his own show now. It's on Channel 4 so he's free from the BBC's post-Sachsgate compliance rules and can be even more offensive and even funnier, yes? Presumably that's the concept of Frankie Boyle's Tramadol Nights. I wasn't offended by any of the jokes in the opener; I just didn't find them very funny. Rules can be daft but they can force a comedian to work harder and be more clever. No need here.

"How ya doin', ya big f****n' Loyalist terrorist suspect?" These were Boyle's first words, aimed at a formidable, shaven-headed man in the audience. He also called the delighted victim a "big gun-running bisexual". Then Catholics got it, then all religious groups. Then gay people (they got it a lot), then John Leslie, George Michael, Ryanair, the Japanese and the mentally ill before finally Boyle cracked a joke I can repeat in a family newspaper, where he lamented the somewhat one-dimensional nature of The Jeremy Kyle Show: "He rounds up his audiences by firing tranquiliser darts into Farmfoods. There's never an edition called I Wanted To Go To Tuscany, You Swine!"

The stage routine was interspersed with filmed sketches which showed up his limitations as a comic actor. I say stage, but the set was a rooftop in the style of a classic movie. As Frankie got more and more enraged, I thought he was going to do a Jimmy Cagney and, in a nod to White Heat, blow himself up. Maybe next time.

Hands up anyone who's heard of Morgana Robinson. Despite her near invisibility on the comedy radar, Channel 4 has obviously decided Morgana is The Next Big Thing and commissioned an entire series based on... what, exactly?

Judging by the first episode, the answer would appear to be her ability to match Frankie Boyle in the use of the f-word, and her passable imitations of Fearne Cotton and Cheryl Cole. Sadly her own characters are little more than lazy, one-dimensional stereotypes that merely limp off the page.

Robinson's most "famous" creation, 14-year-old Gilbert the uber-nerd who's attempting to make a video diary with the help of his granddad, has apparently already garnered a following on YouTube. Despite the standard-issue geek clothes and inch-thick lenses, however, Gilbert barely passes for 17, never mind 14. Robinson also takes whining teenspeak to such a level that the dialogue is basically indecipherable.

Some sketches, like the bickering TV reporters, are mercifully short. Others, most notably Madolynn the past-it Hollywood starlet making a complete fool of herself in a restaurant, drag on interminably. Vicious drunks are not funny, particularly with lines like "This toe was caressed by Martin Scorsuzu". Even less tasteful is an attempt by her husband Norman to excuse her behaviour. As she topples off her chair, taking the tablecloth and crockery with her, he turns to their mortified companions and mutters "She has Asperger's". Boyle would have been proud.

Equally unlikeable are Joyce and Barry Dickens, funeral directors from Chumley, Yorkshire. Barry is a mine of useless information who never shuts up, much to the annoyance of acid-tongued wife Joyce, who never misses an opportunity to tell him what an absolute cretin he is. "You know the Aztecs used to burn stupid people, Barry". And what could be more hilarious that watching the two of them get all lovey dovey during a memorial service while the poor unfortunate corpse has his legs sticking out because Barry is too much of a dozy git to pick the right size of coffin.

The annoying commuter on a train who shrieks into his mobile the entire journey, a couple of senile Chelsea Pensioners who appear to have wandered in from a Harry Enfield/Paul Whitehouse sketch, Lady Gaga attempting to steer a riding mower in some kind of bizarre headgear - on it goes, all accompanied by the obligatory canned laughter. Heaven knows if it was performed in front of a live audience the silence would have been deafening.

Robinson's talents obviously lie in impersonation rather than straight acting - the highlight, such as it was, of the first programme was a 12-year-old Boris Johnson attempting to win a prep school debate by running roughshod over the opposing team. But alas she is no Catherine Tate - the lack of memorable characters does nothing but drag the show down.

If The Morgana Show had started out as a one-off pilot, and Robinson and co-creator James De Frond had been given a chance to fine-tune the sketches over time, the show might have evolved into something passable. But dumping her in at the deep end with a whole series to fill just highlights the weakness of the material. Back to the drawing board on this one.

In [Frankie Boyle's] new series Tramadol Nights, the notoriously abrasive comedian, who rose to fame on BBC Two's Mock The Week, demonstrated that he can make mincemeat of anyone, with a mere one-liner.

"You look like a child's drawing of a dead baby," he told one member of the (presumably masochistic) front row, but that's practically a compliment from Boyle, who has found himself in hot water before for making fun of people with Down's syndrome, and comparing Olympic swimmer Rebecca Adlington to "somebody looking at themselves in the back of a spoon".

Boyle's modus operandi - a mixture of stand-up and pre-recorded sketches - is to say the unsayable. It works best when he is having a pop at something monolithic enough to take, or indeed deserve it, so the best of the sketches were those that satirised the bland inanity of TV culture. In a dark send-up of the hidden-camera reality show format, a man has to convince his friend that he has accidentally killed someone.

I'm less comfortable with the jokes about mental illness - in this episode more or less restricted to crude impressions conflating religion and autism. Here it's not at all clear who or what Boyle is targeting - is it political correctness, or our own prejudices? Whatever his intention, the net result feels too much like an unenlightening mocking of difference.

Boyle's one-liners are, in fact, his strong suit, the vitriol often counterbalanced by sheer verbal flair. But on the whole there's something very brittle about the laughter. The world seems a meaner place after listening to Boyle.

Tramadol Nights is like a really crap version of Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle, in that it's a mixture of stand-up and sketches. It's a shame to have to mention both them in the same sentence but it demonstrates that celebrity and not talent gets things commissioned, seeing as Lee waited a decade to get a series while Boyle does it without breaking a sweat. Still, the latter did have to lower himself to jokes about Jeremy Kyle, and sketches about hidden camera shows and The Green Mile. Yep, it's 2010 people in case you've forgotten.

As Mr Boyle spreads himself quite thinly, and was a regular on a panel show where the guests consistently use their stand-up routines under the guise of spontaneous improvisation, a lot of this material has been seen on telly before. Even the audience member putdowns is the same stuff he always does when faced with his usual aggressive interaction.

That's not to say that in the right circumstances he can't be funny but Frankie Boyle has to understand that he's not Jerry Sadowitz, and his fans (the idiots who are blind to see that Mock The Week has steadily improved since he left, now the other panelists can get a word in) need to realise that he's just not that good.

Frankie Boyle has a reputation for being outrageous, and his new C4 show, Frankie Boyle's Tramadol Nights, certainly didn't disappoint. No sooner had the comic bounded on to the stage than he was ridiculing an audience member for looking like "a dead baby drawn by a child" and describing the Pope and Susan Boyle as "two people who look unconvincing in a dress". Running themes included paedophilia, anal sex, masturbation, mental illness and drug abuse.

The show is a mix of stand up, sketches and an animation called George Michael's Highway Code in which we see the celebrated singer not paying due care and attention to the road as he indulges in various practices I feel are best left to your imagination.

Boyle's stand-up is characteristically assured and hard hitting, peppered with astute and acerbic observations. He is also disarmingly likeable.

However, the sketches are less consistent, undermined in no small part by the star's inability to act his way out of a paper bag. Pastiches of The Green Mile and Knight Rider went on far too long, taking their initially amusing comic concepts to the very edge of tedium.

On the whole, however, this is a very funny show. Was I offended by the material? Not really - Boyle really must try harder.

Frankie Boyle needs barring. I'd hope we'd seen the last of this unpleasant comic when he left the BBC's Mock The Week but, no, up he popped this week on Channel 4 with Frankie Boyle's ­Tramadol Nights, a new show mixing stand-up with sketches. It was awful. Boyle's big idea is to be as nasty as possible to as many people as possible.

Wow, Frankie, that's never been done before. American comedian Bill Hicks founded that particular style back in the late Eighties. But he was slightly different to Boyle - he was occasionally funny.

Boyle, however, mistakes outrage for humour and just ends up coming across like an attention-seeking ­simpleton. An attention-seeking ­simpleton with a silly ginger beard. Does that offend you, Frankie?

There's been no good reason to watch Mock the Week since Frankie Boyle upped sticks, so I'd been looking forward to reviewing Frankie Boyle's Tramadol Nights. Unfortunately Channel 4 said there were no previews available, which is usually PR speak for "We don't think it's much good and we want to avoid it getting a kicking." Brian Logan has reviewed Tramadol Nights for us this morning to see if our fears were justified, though if Channel 4's decision to promote The Morgana Show, another new comedy series, instead is anything to go by then Frankie is dead in the water.

The Morgana Show couldn't be more different from Frankie Boyle's show [which was scheduled before it]. Slow-burning, character-based sketches which often didn't go anywhere but were mostly watchable purely because of the performances. Morgana Robinson came to the attention of Channel Four executives after sending in a home-made DVD and was fast-tracked to the cast of the TNT Show before being given her own series.

Many of the sketches featured brilliantly crafted characters, such as has-been Hollywood actress Madolynn, but lacked any funny lines. There's no doubt that Robinson is an excellent character comedienne, and does the best impression of her good friend Fearne Cotton that you are ever going to see, but too many of the sketches felt like nothing more than a showcase for her acting abilities without providing much humour. There were some exceptions, such as a really enjoyable sketch about a couple who run a funeral home.

While it wasn't brilliant, there was enough quality in The Morgana Show to deserve a look at the second episode, which will feature some more characters. Which is probably more than Frankie Boyle's Tramadol Nights deserves, sadly.

Frankie Boyle is the only comedian currently working who has the ability to delight and offend in such equal measure and he more than met expectations tonight with this new blend of stand-up and sketches.

Cantering gleefully - but never gratuitously - past the boundaries of taste and decency, Frankie brought us such gems as George Michael's Highway Code and Loose Women Iran.

His acting isn't necessarily up to much, but his comic timing is perfect and the script displayed flashes of brilliance.

Boyle did, however, perform a disappointingly weak sketch parodying The Green Mile, but his take on Knight Rider more than made up for it.

The episode's standout piece was undoubtedly his attack on the BBC's perceived penchant for political correctness, in a sketch about a bland TV show called Untitled Street. 'I've got that thing you asked for,' says one faceless character. 'Adjective, adjective, verb,' replies the other.

His live material was also excellent - despite not sitting too naturally amongst the sketches - and his interaction with the audience provided ad-libbing worthy of its own dedicated show.

And with some fantastically acerbic rants about religious people and the mentally ill (they are of course much of a muchness, according to Boyle), it was clear to see that the comedian felt free to insult and incite in his quest for humour.

Naturally, the mood of the programme was unsettling, but actually, the most disturbing thing about the show was the rare sight of Boyle smiling so much. Always in character, of course.

Frankie Boyle's Tramadol Nights review

Channel 4 played its cards very close to its chest with Tramadol Nights; releasing not so much as a preview clip before last night's premiere, perhaps for fear of sparking tabloid outrage. And, sure enough, there was plenty to offend in Frankie Boyle's stand-up and sketch hybrid - but also plenty to enjoy for those who have no issue with his pungent humour.