Tom Basden

Comedy Review: Party

There are pitfalls when comedians make theatre. Sometimes they strive too hard to be serious; sometimes (judging by the reviews of last summer's The School for Scandal), they don't strive hard enough. The 2007 If.Comedy award winner for best newcomer, Tom Basden, sweeps all such considerations aside with his new play about student politics, an idiosyncratic and highly enjoyable piece performed beautifully by a crack cast of upcoming comics.

Setting a sitcom in the world of British politics is a difficult business - you're likely to find yourself tripping over other heavyweights of the genre such as Yes Minister and The Thick of It, for one thing; and will have to work hard to keep it from slipping into chortle-chortle-aren't-politicians-stupid clichés, for another. But blow me if writer Tom Basden hasn't pulled it off with this four-part politcom following a group of young, woolly-headed idealists as they attempt to set up a new political party. Neither Right- nor Left-wing, they prefer to see themselves as "inside the plane".

Theatre review: Party

The debut stage play by award-winning comic Tom Basden witnesses four young idealists trying to form their own political party.

Key marginal

I went to see Party by Tom Basden last night at the Arts Theatre in London's Covent Garden. I really enjoyed it, but I am going to try and explain why like a theatre critic would, even though I hardly ever go to the theatre to watch people sitting around a talking and not dancing or singing.

Party started with Tom Basden

Tom Basden's latest effort is a politically-themed satire called Party, starring Edinburgh Comedy Award winner '09 Tim Key, Best Newcomer Jonny Sweet, along with double act Anna & Katy.

Tim Key and Jonny Sweet interview

Tim Key and Jonny Sweet have just returned from performing at the Sydney Festival and will perform together in Party - a play written by Tim's sketch group comrade, award-winning comedian Tom Basden.

This sketch show didn't attract much attention on its first run earlier this year, but is worth revisiting. Yes, it's frightfully Footlights-y and the quiet, deadpan delivery isn't new, but Tim Key, Stefan Golaszewski, Lloyd Woolf and Tom Basden take just enough risks to set themselves apart. There's a running longform sketch where they all live absurdly together in a caravan, while the highlight of each episode tends to be a wilfully random, spectacularly insulting animation about celebrities' private lives. From these mild surprises come laughs.

Brave Young Men starred Tom Basden as the sidekick of a school caretaker who is told by a time-travelling civil servant that he has become "Caretaker of the World, Brighton and Hove Division". It is billed as a comic take on the sci-fi series Quantum Leap - a quantum leap backwards, I fear. As Professor Deering would sneer, one to file under whimsy.

Owen Molloy (Marc Wootton) is a mild-mannered, slightly porky school janitor who spends his days painting radiators, picking up litter and gently lusting after mousy teacher Miss Violet. So he's surprised when he's approached by a shadowy figure (a local tramp, as it turns out) who anoints him 'Caretaker Of The World: Brighton Division'.

This sitcom pilot from Steve Coogan's Baby Cow productions is essentially a provincial British take on Quantum Leap, with the earnest moral sermonising replaced by absurdity and mild bathos.

It's painfully slight, but rescued from complete inconsequentiality by the quirky premise - a lab assistant attempts to vanquish rivals at a local beer festival with his homebrew - and a decent cast including Tom Basden, who recently distinguished himself in BBC4 sketch show Cowards. At the very least, it's streets ahead of most recent BBC3 comedy commissions, which may be damning it with faint praise, but should make a series a formality.

Marc Wootton and Tom Basden star as a pair of naive nobodies who are charged with saving the planet from mpending disasters by a tramp from the future in this sweetly humorous pilot. Their mission involves some homebrew beer and a good deal of silliness.