La La Land

Doing decent but not spectacular business on BBC3 - 300,000 viewers for episode one - is this frequently astonishing Borat-style prank show.

Marc Wootton, a British comedian underrated over here and thus working in the US for cable network Showtime, rampages through LA in the guises of a useless actor, an unstable psychic and a dodgy documentary-maker.

Exposing the absurdities of Hollywood is sort of the point, but really we're just sitting in wonder as Wootton regularly risks arrest and/or a smack in the teeth by driving hapless punters to breaking point. This could be unpleasant, if Wootton's improvisation weren't so terrifyingly good.

Review: La La Land

Surely Hollywood, land of the vacuous and self-obsessed, and where people will do anything to get on TV, will provide rich pickings for the satirist? Alas Marc Wootton doesn't give the Americans a chance to "shine", as his characters are just as vain and/or deluded as the average Botoxed starlet.

Marc Wootton has all the acting chops required for in-character pranking but, most importantly, he's terrifyingly committed. His exploits in Hollywood, disguised as a fraudulent psychic, a thick actor and an irresponsible documentary-maker, offer the kind of dry-mouthed hilarity you only get from knowing that most of the people on screen are not in on the joke and could snap at any time. Tonight, Wootton wets himself, taunts some gangsterish wannabe producers, and risks an attempted murder charge in his drive to make La La Land extreme and extremely funny. It's both.

Episode two of the stunt show that starts out innocuously enough but soon accelerates to the point where you can scarcely believe what's taking place. Marc Wootton is seemingly never happier than when there's a real chance of being lamped out cold by whoever he's suckering. "You are in the wrong fucking industry if you think you're going to succeed in any way, shape or form," wannabe actor Gary Garner is informed after one run in ... and that's one of the politer comebacks. Genius.

I'm not sure what to make of La La Land. I am a big fan of its star, Marc Wootton, but I find the whole prank TV genre tedious in the extreme.

Wootton plays three characters, an aspiring actor, a showbiz psychic and a documentary film-maker, who come to Los Angeles hoping to realise their dreams of fame and fortune and, in the psychic's case, to escape a charge of the attempted murder of a child.

Once Stateside, they provoke the locals with their rude, ignorant, intolerant and boorish behaviour. You know, like Sacha Baron Cohen was doing with Borat several years ago.

Because the targets are Americans it presumably makes them fair game, but far from humiliating his unsuspecting co-stars Wootton merely serves to highlight their patience, tolerance and forbearance.

Some, like former movie star Ruta Lee, give back as good as they get. "You don't know shit," she helpfully informs oafish cab driver Gary, who has been encouraged to pursue a showbusiness career by his mates down the pub.

La La Land is fitfully amusing, and the three characters are beautifully observed, but I can't help thinking Wootton's talents can be put to better use.

TV review: La La Land

It's sort of impressive that Marc Wootton maintains his characters through the improvised conversations, but it's rarely actually funny, unless you enjoy the sight of people you've never heard of getting irritated with an idiot. And it's not satire either simply to present Hollywood as a place of fools on the make. As the legendary mogul Sam Goldwyn once said: let's have some new cliches.

You might think that Sacha Baron Cohen had queered the pitch for ambush television in the States, making people so wary of foreign television crews that it would be impossible to successfully pull off a spoof documentary. If you go where deranged self-regard and narcissism is the norm, however, you still stand a fighting chance. In La La Land, Marc Wootton has done just that. He plays three expatriate Brits hoping to make their mark in Hollywood, and films his encounters with various unwitting stooges who make a living by servicing the egos of the ambitious. We've seen one of the characters before - Shirley Ghostman, a camp television medium who has arrived in Los Angeles fleeing police charges in England. The logic of his back story didn't entire make sense, but it was still funny to see the brisk professionalism of the publicity agent he was consulting, as she fished helplessly through the wreckage of his recent CV trying to find an upside. Also hoping to build a career are Gary, an Essex geezer who thinks he's the next Jason Statham because everyone looks at him in the pub back home and Brendan Allen, a bearded documentary-maker. The stooges, incidentally, mostly come off with their dignity intact, quickly recognising that Wootton's characters are absolute idiots and in most cases telling them so, but with a degree of exasperation that suggests they haven't twigged that it's wind-up. The funniest moment was the long sequence in which Brendan doggedly tried to pitch an "innovative" shark documentary using underwater cameras, reacting to the tactful explanation that this had been done many times before as a failure to grasp the novelty of his suggestion: "No, no... I don't think you understand what I'm saying," he explained patiently, "we'd be underneath... you know, below where the boats are." There was strong competition for that top spot though, largely because of the detail and nimbleness of Wootton's characterisations. It's genuinely funny.

Hollywood, mecca for the delusional and terminally superficial, is a gift for the satirist. But halfway through Marc Wootton's adventures in La La Land I started to wonder who exactly was the butt of the joke.

Wootton, drawing his characterisations with the broadest of brushes, plays a trio of British wannabes who arrive in LA with stars in their eyes. Meet oafish aspiring actor Gary Garner, halfwit documentary maker Brendan Allen and male (I think) disgraced psychic Shirley Ghostman, a disparate group, you might think, but united by a shared arrogance and misplaced faith in their own talents. The joke is that while Wootton is putting on an act, all of the characters he interacts with are real people. Quite how the ragbag of no-one-you've-everheard-of actors, photographers and publicists were fooled into appearing isn't quite clear but they were, to a man and woman, unfailingly polite when confronted by Wootton's buffoonish rudeness. Each scene inevitably ended with a confounded Hollywood-ite concluding, not unreasonably, that 'the guy's a f***ing idiot'.

So whereas Borat, Bruno and Ali G contrived to expose the fallibility of their targets, all Wootton succeeds in doing is make you feel vaguely ashamed to be British. In short, he's no Sacha Baron Cohen: in setting out to expose the daftness of star-chasing LA, Wootton just exposes his own shortcomings. He deserves credit for the hours he spent in make-up coming up with three very different looks but, aside from one tasteless but funny joke about Shirley Ghostman hiring a hitman to stop him being exposed as a fraud, the material was so puerile it was a wasted effort. The real laugh is that La La Land is made by Fooling Nobody Productions, which at least provided a giggle over the closing credits.

Isn't Hollywood a hoot? That's the rationale behind this new show from funnyman Marc Wootton, who plays three Brits determined to make it big in LA. Talentless filmmaker Brendan, wannabe action hero Gary and disgraced psychic Shirley Ghostman ruffle feathers wherever they go. The twist is that Wootton is the only one acting, whereas the producers, directors and casting agents that he befuddles are genuine, unwittingly going about their business. Deadpan narration from The Mighty Boosh's Julian Barratt completes the set-up, and the result is surprisingly effective. It's already proved a hit Stateside, with Curb Your Enthusiasm's Larry David giving it a thumbs-up.

La La Land Review

What is great about characters like Ali G and Borat is their ability to expose the hypocrisy and stupidity of the people their with. Marc Wootton just exposes the stupidity of his own characters and we already knew that from the outset. There's nothing enduringly amusing at people getting annoyed at annoying people. It's the first in the series though, so it's worth keeping an eye on to see if his characters pull anything with a little more depth out of the bag.