Frankie Boyle

Delighted to say that Mock the Week is back on Thursday!

For newcomers - it's a sort of Have I Got News For You mixed with Whose Line Is It Anyway?, recorded in front of a studio audience the same day, and features the crushingly funny Frankie Boyle and Andy Parsons along with various others, including regular captain Hugh Dennis.

The advent of 24-hour drinking may have largely deprived this sort of comedy of its natural constituency - the punter who consumes his bodyweight in Last Orders beer and then staggers off in search of radio-based hilarity - but that doesn't stop the Beeb from commissioning it.

Frankly, if you're sober none of it makes much sense, but it appears that the Scrooby of the title (played by the writer of the series, Andy Parsons) has gone missing but has left a series of recordings on his MP3 player, each describing his experience of various lifestyles, some of them alternative and some not.

The impressive list of guest stars includes Dara O'Briain, Frankie Boyle, Marcus Brigstocke and Lucy Porter, proof - if nothing else - that Parsons has some good friends on the stand-up circuit. There's also an interactive element that involves contacting a website and suggesting other enterprises for him to 'investigate'.

Ironically, before the BBC started advertising the fact that 'Thursdays are Funny', they really were, with comedians Frankie Boyle and Russell Howard in blistering form on Mock the Week.

You know what? I've been thinking that TV is complete garbage for ages... and then I realised... I've been watching, and laughing, and enjoying, Mock The Week.

Dara O'Briain, the wonderful, affable giant of a host, is a wolf in sheep's clothing. He looks and sounds for all the world like a bloody nice bloke. That is until he shoot you down with his heat seeking wit.

Same goes for Frankie Boyle. Boyle seems to be more at ease on the telly now, but hasn't lost his (f)ire. He can still pull out the jokes that make you wince and laugh simultaneously, but thankfully, gone are the 'rape' jokes. He's stopped trying too hard.

The rest of the gang are, in fairness, bit part players. That may seem a little unkind, but only Ed Byrne gets a look in when Frankie and Dara go off on one.

A more inane panel game you are unlikely to find - unless you catch the dire News Knight on ITV1, and I'd advise catching hepatitis instead - Mock the Week is a show you don't even laugh at contemptuously.

Rather, as Dara O'Briain, Hugh Dennis, Frankie Boyle, Andy Parsons and Russell Howard wade through it, as if through thigh-high excrement, it's a show to sit slack-jawed in front of, awestruck at its dearth of humour, charm and originality. Still, at least Ben Elton isn't in it.

It's great to have Mock the Week back. I love the show's lack of slickness and it's the ideal vehicle for Frankie Boyle who seems strangely restricted on News Knight with Trevor McDonald.

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