Kevin Eldon

Movie review - The Comedian's Guide to Survival (2016)

You may just see comedy from a different perspective once you're done.

Film review: The Comedian's Guide To Survival

Comedies about stand-up comedy are difficult to pull off. How do you capture the highs and lows of performing live on film? How do you capture the buzz of the good gig, the despair of the bad gig? How do you capture a world that is simultaneously niche and mainstream? The Comedian's Guide to Survival comes pretty close.

The Comedian's Guide to Survival review

Films about comedians are rarely funny, but The Comedian's Guide To Success breaks that curse by taking the angst and insider jokes of Louis CK's Louie and playing it broader, less arthouse. It's flawed, but with the movie taking its own advice about persistence, director and writer Mark Murphy more than gets away with it.

The Comedian's Guide To Survival review

To be frank, it makes Sex Lives Of The Potato Men look like The Apartment.

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Damned, damn it, didn't quite get going. It features Jo Brand, Alan Davies, Kevin Eldon, which should be enough for most, and is a kind of amalgam of Brand's Getting On and The Office. Set in a social work centre.

Much of the first episode had, perforce, to establish scene and characters: the arsewit idiots, the kind idiots and the thudbucket incompetents. Wincingly funny in parts, but the whole has yet to surpass the sum of its parts. Social workers don't exactly need a bad press these days, but Brand might just have pulled off a neat little trick, a la W1A, by getting us through laughter to acknowledge the flawed humanity that inhabits any specific world. There is much hope, though I fear for the moment when it gets labelled in TV Quick or somesuch as a "documentary series".

Damned is the third comedy drama in what could be termed Jo Brand's social/healthcare triptych (after Getting On, set in a geriatric hospital ward, and Going Forward, in which she appeared as care-home worker); Damned, in which she also stars, is set in a child protection social services unit.

Co-created with Morwenna Banks (who appears as co-worker Ingrid), Damned follows in Getting On and Going Forward's tracks by being low-key, dark-humoured and full of throwaway lines, but - on the evidence of last-night's opening episode (of six), has yet to reach the former's superb heights of pathos and bathos.

The opener was essentially an office comedy, with the social services aspect merely a faint hum in the background. The people staffing this department alongside Brand and Alan Davies as caring and care-worn social workers Rose and Al would be recognisable in any workplace; Ingrid, telling everyone about her upcoming hysterectomy, ditzy temp Nat (Isy Suttie) - "they call us interim workers now" - well-meaning busybody Martin (Kevin Eldon); office snitch Nitin (Himesh Patel) and manager Denise (Georgie Glen), fluent in management-speak, as she has been "tasked with" creating "streamlined cluster teams".

Add to the mix Aisling Bea's single mother, who has a stalkery crush on Al, and Rose's waste-of-space ex (Nick Hancock), and there are any number of permutations to be worked. The writers certainly nailed the irritations of office life - broken lifts and out-of-order loos, incomprehensible phone systems and smelly communal fridges - but there was very little in the way of social commentary or bittersweet comedy.

It's early days, though, and it could be that Brand, Banks and co-writer Will Smith are softening us up for some comedy with a real emotional punch, glimpses of which we saw only very late in the first episode, when Rose came into contact with an old flame, whose family is now mired in ill health and drug abuse. I certainly hope so as the performances, perhaps needless to say with such a talented cast, were wonderful.

TV review Damned, Channel 4

A very funny show, thanks to bravura performances from Jo Brand, Himesh Patel, Kevin Eldon and Isy Suttie.

Damned: Jo Brand and Himesh Patel excel

Ultimately I feel that Channel 4 have struck gold with Damned and airing it directly after the equally brilliant National Treasure means that I know which channel I'll be tuning into every Tuesday night.

Damned: could have packed a bigger punch

Damned was originally commissioned as a one-off by Sky Arts, who declined to order a full series, enabling Channel 4 to snatch it. Sky won't be kicking themselves just yet. Damned was warm and well-observed but it should have been scabrously funny. Like most sitcoms, it will surely improve over its six-episode run as characters grow and the script loosens up. Until then, its case notes read "promising but more jokes required".