Ian Wolf

Gigglebox Weekly #28

This week Ian Wolf encounters something wetter than the sea at Weston-Super-Mare and Stewart Lee's idea of hell.

At this point I should say that not only have I never watched this programme before, but I've never watched or listened to any of Chris Moyles' shows (for that matter I've never listened to Radio 1). As a result I was somewhat hesitant at watching Chris Moyles' Quiz Night, but as there were no other new comedy programmes on I had to make do.

For those who have also never seen the show before, each edition features Moyles taking part in a quiz against three celebrity guests. The audience beforehand vote for who they think will win and those who pick the winner win a share of £1,000 (on this week's edition the money won by everyone equalled £21 each). The player who comes last has to sing out the show.

When I spotted the panel which consisted of Jason Manford, Jeremy Clarkson and opera singer Katherine Jenkins, I thought that as a panel it was okay, although I can't help but think that it sounds like Stewart Lee's idea of hell. Anyone who saw the first episode of his Comedy Vehicle will testify.

However, the other guests who appeared during the questions, including Britney Spears, Robbie Williams and the Sugababes, took it down to the level that I expected from Moyles - cheap and rubbish. This show isn't something that I'd watch again.

Sky1's latest sitcom offering comes from the team who helped make The Royle Family what it was. Shame it seems the magic has gone.

The Café is set in a... well you can guess where, but this particular establishment is located in Weston-Super-Mare and is called "Cyril's". Despite this, there's no-one called Cyril in the show. The main characters are the owner of the café, Carol (Ellie Haddington), her daughter and wannabe writer Sarah (Michelle Terry, who co-writes the series with Ralf Little, who also stars in the series), and Carol's mother Mary (June Watson).

However, this is just the start. There are 13 main characters.

Now, I don't mind there being lots of characters in a sitcom. Green Wing, for example, had a minimum of 14 regular characters in it at any one time. However, you can't make the characters fully rounded if the episodes are just half-an-hour (minus advertising time), compared to the hour-long episodes Green Wing had. There are some interesting characters, like Kieran the living statue (Kevin Trainor), but it's a bit of a mess.

But the main problem with this show is that it just isn't funny enough. It comes across as overtly sentimental, and while this programme does have the odd laugh now and then, what this show really needs is less characters and less drama.

Sitcom pilot Kabadasses is not only the last Comedy Lab episode for this series, but also the last ever. It's to be replaced by a new strand called E4 Funnies, which will be shorter but the pilots will have bigger budgets.

So, was Kabadasses a glorious swansong or a damp squib to end this run? Well, it definitely started somewhat slow. There seemed little in the way of plot and the deliberately bad graphics were a bit cheesy for my liking. However, as it progressed the actual ideas began to emerge, and they themselves were rather clever.

In the pilot, two friends, Bobby (Shazad Latif) and Vin (Jack Doolan) decide to create the world's first all-white kabaddi team. This, at first, sounds rather dodgy. For starters, Bobby is Asian, although he claims to be "white inside". However, the main problem when you first hear this idea is that you tend to think: "An all white team? Isn't that rather... racist?"

The answer to that question is: "No". Because kabaddi is an Indian sport - dominated by Indians - white people are, in this case, the minority. It's a political correctness story turned on its head as far as we Brits are concerned.

The pilot, however, was open-ended, with several story lines left unfinished (we didn't even see the newly formed team play a single game of kabaddi) so the show's writers are clearly hoping that it'll get a full series.

Judging by the line-ups for the third series of this programme, I think it's safe to say that Dave are running low on suitable locations to film. The first episode featured Ardal O'Hanlon performing in Dublin, a city which the programme's already covered in the last series when Jason Byrne performed there. Later in the series, Stephen K Amos is performing in London, Jack Whitehall's location in the first series. And Reginald D Hunter is performing in Edinburgh, which, as far as I know, isn't where he lives currently. It's certainly not his hometown, although since that would mean filming in America you can excuse Dave for not going there...

In terms of the first edition of the series, O'Hanlon seemed to be performing well, but like many an occasion on this programme I was more impressed by the guests he had performing alongside him. This episode featured one-liner stand-up Gary Delaney (who, out of interest to northern comedy fans, is Sarah Millican's boyfriend) and Josie Long. I probably favoured Delaney's one-liners over Long's narrative, if I'm honest, but both demonstrated why they're two of the most sought after comedians in the country.

Mongrels was one of my favourite shows from last year. Mind you, I'm a sucker for just about anything anthropomorphic. The fact that this and Radio 4 comedy Warhorses of Letters is on at the same time's made me a rather happy man this past week...

This show, often viewed as an animal puppet version of Family Guy, is always enjoyable to a certain degree. It's full of jokes, most of which seem to work, both in the main dialogue and the cutaway scenes. The characters are entertaining, from metrosexual fox Nelson (Rufus Jones) to it-bitch Destiny (Lucy Montgomery), to the f***ing foul-mouthed fox Vince (Paul Kaye).

The second series started with a double bill - which to me felt wrong, primarily because the second episode was a "Horror special" which really should have gone out on Halloween. What on Earth the BBC Three schedulers were thinking of I have no idea.

Still, both episodes were entertaining, with their jokes and musical numbers, especially with a guest appearance from Richard O'Brien as a zombie dog singing a Rocky Horror Show-style love song. The one problem I have with Mongrels is that because it's on BBC Three, it has a very BBC Three idea of what a celebrity is. For example: Clive Anderson - great. Ainsley Harriott - could be worse. Jeff Brazier - never heard of him. Danny Dyer - oh f*** off (as Vince might say).

Still, this is good show on the whole. Certainly one of the better comedies on BBC Three, which probably means it'll be axed...

While most of the TV listings and reviews will be concerned about a certain sitcom written by someone with too many awards on his mantelpiece, it's easy to overlook that another sitcom was also returning just before it.

The second series of Rev. began this week (I should point out that the full stop after Rev. is not out of some inflated sense of the need to stick to the rules grammar of punctuation, but because that's what it's actually called in the show's opening credits), with Tom Hollander returning as the Reverend Adam Smallbone. How fitting it is in this case for the vicar to be named after the first male sinner, especially as the opening scenes see him yawning while talking to God in his head and admitting he's stashed booze away while on a retreat - and not a holiday.

In this episode Adam accidentally stops a robber, resulting in inaccurate praise for him and getting nominated for a Pride of Britain Award. The show is clever in the way it makes Adam come to terms with his moral dilemmas, and about whether or not he should accept this honour.

However, I have to admit being slightly uncomfortable about watching Rev., sometimes because I don't want to see all these moral dilemmas played out in a sitcom. What I want to see is something funnier. But it's probably mainly because I was risen Catholic, and so to me the world of St. Saviour's in the Marshes has always been a bit alien. It's also probably why I preferred Father Ted to The Vicar of Dibley.

Still, when it gets it right, Rev. is an entertaining show and worth a watch.

Gigglebox Weekly #26

This week Ian Wolf reviews three TV shows that don't star Ricky Gervais and a dwarf.

This is the penultimate Comedy Lab pilot, and stars Tom Davis as Iain Bodkin, a "comedian" (in the loosest sense of the word) whose main job is doing warm up for a TV programme... but he's actually a total failure.

This is something of a cringe comedy, as you continuously watch Bodkin trying to be funnier than he really is. His lack of success is made clear when he is forced to work in a supermarket, where his continued attempts to make people laugh always bring him down - as well as his supervisor's trousers.

Eventually Bodkin finds some work on a panel show, albeit dressed up as a penguin, kicked by a martial arts expert into an inflatable swimming pool of chocolate. This results in a pointless rivalry between him and the warm up guy for this panel show (played rather well by Will Smith).

This pilot's definitely got legs and would probably make for an entertaining series if given the chance. Yes, Bodkin isn't a love character. In fact he is something of a bastard, but he is a funny bastard...

Dave have decided to revive their panel show Argumental, but not to revive any of the regulars who appeared in the first three series, with John Sergeant, Marcus Brigstocke and Rufus Hound being replaced with Sean Lock, Seann Walsh and Robert Webb.

The main question with this change is, "Has it worked?" Well, in terms of banter between host and panel, it does seem to be better. I think that having a comedian rather than a journalist in the chair is going to increase the laughs, simply because Lock is more used to having to improvise on the spot, as well as being used to the panel show format as a captain on 8 Out of 10 Cats.

However, I've never really been keen on Webb's appearances on panel games. It doesn't seem to be his kind of format, unlike his comedy partner David Mitchell. I also think Walsh is the stronger performer, but despite this Webb won the first episode in the series...

The main highlight of the debut episode was guest Jimmy Carr having to argue that, "There's no place for women's sport on television," while standing next to Britain's only professional sumo wrestler, which is a rather terrifying prospect. You were just waiting for her to faux-lash out at him, but instead it was Walsh who offered to fight her.

I thought it was an OK debut, but it needs a few more episodes to bed in.