David Walliams' Awfully Good

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It takes a brave man to front a daft show about so-bad-they-are-good films when he's equipped with a truly execrable script, as is the case here. But maybe that's the point. Anyhow, David Walliams is at his most camp and arch as he introduces two hours of clips from some real stinkers. Awfully Good Movie Moments is quite good fun, particularly if you wish to reacquaint yourself with what must surely be the worst sex scenes ever filmed, those between a flailing, slapping Juliet Binoche and Jeremy Irons in Damage. But wait, maybe Heather Locklear snogging the Swamp Thing is even more dumb and disturbing. Or what about two evil dolls in a sexy clinch in Bride of Chucky? Walliams roams far and wide, looking at dreadful death scenes (including one involving a carrot that must be seen to be believed), horrible accents (hello Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins and Don Cheadle's toe-curling cockerenee in Ocean's Eleve]n) and his top five most annoying film characters (Dakota Fanning's screaming brat in [i]War of the Worlds). Mind you, possibly the most disturbing sight of all is of Walliams dressed as Demi Moore at her potter's wheel in Ghost.

Awfully Good is one of those shows which, I presume, is only around to fill airtime with archive footage. In this case it's with adverts which host David Walliams claims are so bad that they are good.

I have to admit that as far as archive shows go, this one is indeed awfully good. It's a very simple set up. Just show a quick ad and you can get a laugh from something as simple as the name (examples include a diet pill called "Ayds" and a toy dog called "Gaylord") or the product itself. It's really quite amazing that products like golf clubs you can urinate into, the flatulence deodorizer and spray-on hair haven't caught on. Incredibly amazing, in fact.

The most excruciating part of the show was actually the adverts which were either racist, sexist or in some other way inappropriate. It'' shocking to think that only a few decades ago advertisements could openly imply that poor time management is the fault of your wife not giving you enough Kellogg's. Kellogg's seem to be a prime offender, too, having also commissioned an advert featuring a black footballer suffering from a white eye.

The best part, for me, was seeing adverts which I myself could remember. Being a relatively young man most of the adverts were before my time, and many came from abroad, but just occasionally I could see something which made me go: "Yes! I remember that. God, that was rubbish." I'm looking at you Selfstyle Windows, and We Buy Any Car for that matter.

But before I go, I'd like to point out that the worst ads in the show we not those in the programme. It was those during the ad breaks for Awfully Good. They were not so much awfully good, rather just plain awful.

It'll be hard to take Mad Men ­seriously again after seeing the kind of guff American advertising that agencies really churned out back in the 1960s.

David Walliams is back fronting the second in his occasional series celebrating the world's worst TV commercials. It's a marathon of a show stuffed with two hours of sexist and racist ads and wildly inappropriate public service information films.

There are some bizarre celebrity campaigns, like Barbra Streisand doing her bit for "retarded children" and Clint Eastwood warning of the dangers of crack.

There are also plenty of products that should never have seen the light of day - like the device that slips under your mattress so you can reach for your shotgun without getting out of bed, the Hawaii chair that lets you hula your way to fitness in the office and a product called "Sticky Nips", that does exactly what you'd imagine.

The taller, more hirsute half of the Little Britain and Come Fly with Me duo returns to the Awfully Good strand to present a rundown of his favourite so-bad-they're-good TV adverts. It works better than you might expect, since as well as being funny, adverts from the past also show us how much things have changed. "Be a good little Maxwell House wife" and "What cigarette do you smoke, Doctor?" are just two slogans that one might have trouble slipping past the censors today.

David Walliams' Awfully Good should also have been renamed, perhaps, as Mr Pot Discusses The Kettle's Colouring (well, perhaps not). For the man behind Come Fly With Me to present a programme making fun of bad TV takes not just the biscuit but the whole box of McVities.

Ah, but this is old bad TV, mostly from the 1970s: we've all moved on from that now, right? Imagine, men in outrageous drag or blacking up as racial stereotypes - thank goodness we're more sophisticated now.

Presenting this kind of thing is just money for old clips, with Walliams simply having to raise his eyebrows and deliver scripted putdowns (and, yes, dress up as a laydee again). Some were intrinsically funny, some just odd (like the BBC's tragic, short-lived 1978 attempt at a hip black music show, Blackcurrent) and some hardly worth mentioning - we've probably all made better jokes about Keanu Reeves' acting and old beauty pageants ourselves than anything Walliams could offer. Lazy stuff.

Last Night's TV - David Walliams' Awfully Good, C4

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David Walliams' Awfully Good review

A two hour clip show presented by Little Britain's David Walliams, which despite aiming for the "so bad it's good" moments that it was just terrible.

David Walliams appears to have found his calling, hosting the first of three two-hour shows dedicated to camp so-bad-it's-good-ness. Tonight, he picks the most misguided scenes on TV, including clips from the BBC's black music show Blackcurrent, broadcast in 1978, though presumably Little Britain's Ting Tong gets a free pass. In future episodes, expect Keanu's clunking performance in Bram Stoker's Dracula and some "flatulence-deodorising underpants".