The British Comedy Show Appreciation Thread - Page 11

The first episode of PSYCHOVILLE 2 was amazing. So darkly funny and almost Lynch-like unnerving at point.

Anyone seen Whites starring Alan Davies? Season 1 (six episodes) is up on Hulu, and it's fucking great. Highly recommend it.

(Apologies if this has been discussed previously... big thread)

I recently watched some Mighty Boosh and found it unfunny. walked away and came back and tried it again. still not funny. I liked the one guy for his part on IT Crowd, but not here.

Been enjoying the year end 'Big Quiz Show' hosted by Jimmy Carr. Someone posted several years worth as a torrent and I've been watching them. Might actually check out something else with Russel Brand in it as he's very crazy in this quiz show.

Been following 'Would I lie to you', 'QI', 'Graham Norton', 'Have I got news for you'. On a december episode of '8 out of 10 cats' Jimmy Carr gave Sean Lock a huge bottle of aged whiskey, and he opened it and his team was drinking from it and were getting hillariously drunk (and giving other team's Jedwood a real hard time). Eventually they went to commercial and when they returned apparently the producers had taken away the bottle as things had been getting out of hand! Very funny stuff.

So for nostalgic reasons I have been watching some old Harry Enfield clips on youtube.

That is all.

I loved me some Harry Enfield back in the day.

I've just discovered the comedy of Harry Enfield. My life is now complete.

The only thing is, you have to be selective with Harry Enfield. He was occasionally brilliant, but he also was responsible for a lot of catchphrase reliant characters that he completely ran into the ground, and some of them were not that funny to begin with. Same problems with his partner Paul Whitehouse's offshoot The Fast Show- there was gold there, but a lot of crap too. Have you ever watched that, Art? (look up characters like Unlucky Alf, Rowley Birkin QC, and The Fast Show Cockneys on youtube if you're curious)

Here's a classic Whitehouse/Enfield creation known as the Self-Righteous Brothers (sadly, a good example of those initially great characters who outstayed their welcome). It's funny because if you remove some of Enfield's absurdities, people like this really truly exist. The pub setting is very important:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Disciple_72 

The only thing is, you have to be selective with Harry Enfield. He was occasionally brilliant, but he also was responsible for a lot of catchphrase reliant characters that he completely ran into the ground, and some of them were not that funny to begin with.

You've only gone and picked out my three favourite Enfield/Whitehouse bits in the Cholmondeley-Warners, Public Improvement FIlms and the Self-Righteous Brothers. Back then I was a big fan of Michael Paine, Smashey and Nicey, The Scousers and The Palace Of Righteous Justice too but they don't seem to hold up as well as some others. Julio Geordio and Tim Nice-But-Dim still make me laugh though, although with Tim it was always about the accent and the teeth more than the writing.

Something which always captivated me about Enfield's comedy was the way the satire could swing in tone from sketch to sketch. They got a lot of mileage out of meausred posh accents juxtaposed with angry, shouting lower class characters. But there's a rage which seems to bubble under even the more gentle sketches and I always thought of Enfield as one of the angrier comedic voices of his time. But he took swings at all types from all classes so it's not really like he was "the voice of" anyone in particular. Just angry people in general I guess, so I loved him in my raging youth.

And you're dead right about the strengths and weaknesses of the series. They're the same strengths and weaknesses of a lot of sketch shows I guess - born from having some good ideas and then having to pump out a bunch more to fill the running time of the series.

Speaking of that rage, I think one of the most brilliant moments of Enfield's career was the reveal about Frank's son. Not exactly subtle, but that was never really his style. A real "it all makes sense now" moment:

Has anyone seen the NEW Fast Show episodes that  Fosters is sponsoring? I found someone had collected the first wave of 6 very short episodes on line as a torrent---the you tube Fosters channel says I'm 'not in the viewing area'! There's a new set of 6 just starting in the last couple of weeks, good luck in seeing it!

Haven't seen them yet, but if the quality is anything like the Partridge stuff Steve Coogan did for Fosters a year or so ago then they could be quite good. Couldn't watch those from outside the UK either, someone else would always put them on youtube (for viewing anywhere) though.