Spencer Jones

Upstart Crow: Bard saved Elton from sitcom oblivion

Alack the day! Upstart Crow (BBC Two) has shuffled off its chortle coil. There was something for everyone in Ben Elton's learned Bardcom.

Review: Upstart Crow, episode 5

I couldn't see a co-writing credit alongside Ben Elton's name for William Shakespeare, but as anyone with a basic grasp of English literature will spot this week's episode is a comical rewrite of Macbeth. And a pretty nifty one, with David Mitchell as the bard convinced that he has committed murder at the behest of his scheming wife so that they can move to the big house in Stratford before prices rise out of reach.

Very early on in Upstart Crow, a collaborative Ben Elton-William Shakespeare vehicle for the hopelessly thick and untalented David Mitchell, a member of the studio audience reacted to Liza Tarbuck just saying something in an accent, with her titty-dumplings to the fore with the kind of prolonged loud screeching fit that you or I could only hope to achieve while dousing our genitals in hydrochloric acid. My heart sank. But soon it actually began to get funny, sometimes very. The audience member had obviously been led out by an intern with the promise of a cup of tea and perhaps, actually it's to be hoped, a reassuring whisper of "you're not clever enough for this, dear". By the end, this mashup of Will's artistic frustrations in an England seething with stupidity, and as relevant to today as to 1584, had become a delight, to the extent the audience was anticipating the gags. Of a fiendishly cunning plot to frustrate young love, in which it had become necessary to procure a play-dead potion, Mitchell's brimming "I can't see how it can possibly go wrong" had much of the hubristic glee in seeing it coming of a Mainwaring, a Hancock.

Inevitable parallels - there was much God's bodikins! and gut-porridge stuff - will be drawn with Blackadder, although perhaps someone could tell me why that's in any conceivable way a bad thing. But Mr Elton has (almost) wholly redeemed himself for crimes against David Haig in the relentlessly smile-free elf'n'safety trudge that was 2013's The Wright Way, and it's nice to see he's got his brain back. And I do like Spencer Jones as Kempe, played as Ricky Gervais as David Brent - way too knowingly see-what-I-did-there, but that's how Ben rolls.

Preview: Upstart Crow, episode 2

It's great to report that the first episode of Upstart Crow was not a fluke. Writer Ben Elton repeats the trick again in the second episode. In fact if there is a problem here it isn't so much that this week's episode is like Blackadder, it's more a case that it is too much like last week's episode.

Ben Elton's Upstart Crow seems stuck in the 1980s, or 1970s, with its embarrassing canned laughter (if it's actually a studio audience, then it deserves to be confined to a can) and eagerness to please.

David Mitchell portrays a more modern William Shakespeare, who is struggling to make a name for himself - not helped by an uncaring world, and family. The Ricky Gervais mickey take character (Kempe - Spencer Jones) is faintly amusing, but Elton crams in far too many words - many of them, sadly, pathetically juvenile.

Upstart Crow review

Gadzooks! After some high-profile flops in both hemispheres, Ben Elton has rediscovered his mojo... and all it took was a return trip to Elizabethan England.

Preview: Upstart Crow

Never mind Leicester winning the league, what odds would you have got on Ben Elton being funny again? But hold the front page: Elton has got his mojo back. Well, everything is relative. After his appalling The Wright Way it looked like the acclaimed comic might never make us laugh again. But he has done it with Upstart Crow, which, let's not mince words, is Blackadder Does The Bard.

Comedian of the month #27, Spencer Jones

Spencer Jones is certainly a performer that takes some getting used to. Appearing as his character The Herbert, a strange and spritely figure with bright clothes and hunched shoulders, Jones approaches the medium of stand up comedy in a way I haven't quite seen before, throwing out customary communication norms with little regard for them.

Comedy gigs of the year 2015

Featuring Rob Delaney, Tommy Tiernan, Frankie Boyle, Daniel Kitson, Sam Simmons, Bill Bailey, Stewart Lee, Weird Al Yankovic, Richard Gadd and Spencer Jones.

Best comedy of 2015

Praise for Mel Brooks, Sam Simmons, Katherine Ryan, Joseph Morpurgo and Spencer Jones, but Andrew Lawrence was turkey of the year.