Jarred Christmas

Jarred Christmas on... Christmas

Spoonfed chats to the riotously funny Kiwi stand-up about his namesake day.

Jarred Christmas takes a stand at the Edinburgh Fringe

Now an award-winning comedian who's appeared on Mock The Week and in a BBC sitcom, Jarred Christmas is standing up for himself in his new show. We spoke to him about that, his first experiences of the Fringe, and the challenge facing the thousands who travel to Edinburgh every year to try and make their name.

Never let it be said I don't give things a chance. The second episode of The Persuasionists was marginally better than last week's yawn-fest, mainly because there was more going on, but "The Handsomeness" was still a laugh-free zone for the most part. Things perk up whenever Daisy Haggard or Simon Farnaby are around acting silly, but it's otherwise a waste of time and talent.

The plot this week involved a campaign for beauty cream "Night Gak", being modeled by bimbo popstar Victoria (Kelly Adams), who revealed to Greg (Adam Buxton) that she's looking for an "ordinary" boyfriend, prompting him to demonstrate his innate facileness in order to woo her. Meanwhile, Emma (Haggard) was given a position of power that led to her quarantining all the ugly employees in the agency's boiler room.

Look, there's definitely potential in an advertising agency sitcom with an episode focusing on beauty, but The Persuasionists is too daft to land any insightful blows, and its surrealism isn't clever enough to feel inspired. The IT Crowd does a far better job of skewering workplace/pop-culture targets via oddball, larger-than-life comedy. Here, you just have Iain Lee acting like he's still reading The 11 O'Clock Show's autocue, and Jarred Christmas bellowing.

Advertising sitcom The Persuasionists was so imbecilic, you had to see it to believe it. Episode one centred on the marketing campaign for "Cockney Cheese" and the slogan "Cockney Cheese. Leave it aaaaaat !"

"If he's a Cockney man, strolling along in Cockney London," pointed out their client, 'Cockney Jim'. "He wouldn't be surprised to find some Cockney cheese ? Would he ?"
Er... no.

The Persuasionists stars Adam Buxton, Jarred Christmas, Simon Farnaby, Iain Lee, Lee Ross, and is written by Jonathan Thake. Boys, your friends are embarrassed to know you.

Considering the daftness of the advertising industry, it is surprising that it has inspired so few comedies. The Persuasionists, a six-part sitcom starring Jarred Christmas which starts tonight, redresses this balance. The ad world is peculiarly suited to comedy treatment, complete with outrageous personalities, facile themes, a frenetic pace and a limitless supply of colourful "visiting" personalities (to pep up each episode). In the series, which is written by Jonathan Thake (who used to work in an ad agency) and produced by the company responsible for The Inbetweeners, such outlandish characters are well represented: there's a sexual predator, a brainy loser, a neurotic female executive, a bullish boss and witless account director. The agency is called HHH&H, a wry reference to the vain habit among marketeers of forming their agencies' names around their initials. In tonight's episode, Greg (the witless one, played by Adam Buxton) must pitch a sub-standard campaign for brown, pungent "Cockney cheese" ("for empty nesters who like dairy products") to an antagonistic client Jim, played by Lee Ross. The presentation goes terribly and the team has to use cunning to win over the client, enlisting a female team member as a "honey trap". It all goes desperately wrong and concludes with a booze-stoked confrontation. It's light, sometimes entertaining, vacuous stuff - like the industry it depicts. Just try to ignore the overdone canned laughter.

Set in the world of advertising, this new sitcom has its own unique selling point: it's approximately one-third funny. The third succeeds because every time Simon Farnaby steps in as sex-crazed international fixer, Keaton, it's to do something hilarious with a big pencil. The rest fails because the other execs (Adam Buxton, Iain Lee, Jarred Christmas and Daisy Haggard) are something-and-nothing characters, and fail to add anything clever or convincing to the flabbier bits of the script. Nevertheless, there are some genuinely good ideas here, and the team's battle to put together a convincing campaign for a new product, cockney cheese, is leavened by the presence of guest star Lee Ross. He makes a marvellous cockney, possibly because until recently he played Denise's ex, Owen, in EastEnders.