MeeBOX

Get Me Back In The Box

A blog post from creator Adam Buxton in which he reveals that BBC Three have dropped the project. He also gives his thoughts on this.

Considering The Adam and Joe Show is one of the TV shows we miss most, we were bound to like a Joe-less Adam Buxton's return to TV. And we did. With a few reservations.

The funniest item featured a fervent choir singing nonsense as if their lives depended on it. Their rousing hymn featured lines such as 'there's a naked czar in my mouth'.

But the ragbag approach didn't serve MeeBox well, with some ideas repeated throughout; and others appearing in one-offs in a TV evocation of YouTube culture.

MeeBOX, a comedy sketch show created by Adam Buxton, half of Adam and Joe (the first half), is a bit of a muddle.

It has a lot to do with internet video clips (I think the name MeeBOX is a nod to YouTube). There are all sorts of knowing nods to the modern world, sometimes so knowing I don't really know what they're nodding at, if you know what I'm saying.

Hit and miss, I think you'd call it - obviously, the phrase was invented to describe comedy sketch shows. BBC3 certainly doesn't seem convinced, putting it out at 11.45pm on a Sunday night.

But I do like the spoof of a TV show called 10,000 Things That Are Sooo Crap, in which 'journalists', 'comedians', a token posh bloke and a token Scot sit on sofas, or on the stairs, and talk bollocks about bollocks. They swim, that's about it, says journalist Manthea Shringleton, about fish, at number 1,245 in the list of crap things.

MeeBox was supposed to be some sort of YouTube mickey take, a fictional website where all kinds of things happened.

The first sketch was all about an actor (or pretender as he called himself) called Famous Guy, who had starred in films like The Exploding Car. There were clips from the film to demonstrate how awful his cockney accent was. I was chuckling. Good sign.

Then it sort of dipped a little bit. There was an unchuckly sketch called 10,000 Things That Are Sooo Crap (fish and buildings were on the menu last night), and Ken Korda (a vacant and smiley independent film interviewer) was ok.

MeeBOX then upped the chuckle stakes with a very funny version of Songs Of Praise, where Adam just scrolled across new words to the hymn (there's a naked czar in my mouth), and a very neat pastiche of a nerd and his new film making software.

Like most sketch shows, there was a hit and miss element to all this, but half of the content was funny. Not a bad ratio.

MeeBOX was a pilot, let's not forget. I think Adam Buxton is funny and clever and at his best when he's mucking about with video and music and stuff. I hope he gets a full series because, on this evidence, he just about deserves it. And it'd be nice to see Adam on telly more often.

Adam Buxton takes a break from working with his comedy partner Joe Cornish with this 'DIY sketch show' pilot. It's a bit like YouTube or MySpace, except it's all stuff I've made myself, says Buxton.

Especially funny is the software tutorial about movie-making, a re-subtitling of Songs of Praise and a sketch about why fish are rubbish. Some of Buxton's best-known characters, Ken Korda and Famous Guy, do video blogs, and the title music is by Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood (Buxton co-directed the video for the band's single Jigsaw Falling into Place).

MeeBOX news from Adam Buxton

A blog post from MeeBOX creator Adam Buxton, posted in 2007, in which the writer talks about the development of the pilot.