comedians
Cedar RapidsThursday, 28 April 2011
The protagonist in a coming-of-age movie is usually an adolescent, but in Cedar Rapids it's a fully-grown adult. The hapless ingénu in question is goofy and naive Tim Lippe (Ed Helms), dedicated 34-year-old salesman for the Brown Star Insurance... Read more... |
Andy Parsons, O2 IndigoSunday, 10 April 2011
Andy Parsons can do angry, baffled, sarky. He can have a swing and hit a bullseye. Take this, Alan Sugar. Take that, Ryanair. But you wonder, is he too happy for greatness? The title of the show he’s currently touring hints at a cheery disposition... Read more... |
The Ricky Gervais Show, E4Tuesday, 15 March 2011
A show that began as that hippest of 21st-century technology, a podcast, gains new life in a transfer to the dinosaur of television having been given a makeover with old-school Hanna-Barbera-style cartooning. The Ricky Gervais Show started life on... Read more... |
The Story of Variety, BBC FourMonday, 28 February 2011
For those whose only knowledge of the form is the Royal Variety Performance, this programme (part of BBC Four’s variety season) gave a nice, if all too brief, overview. The first of a two-parter was presented by Michael Grade, whose family is... Read more... |
Episodes, BBC TwoMonday, 10 January 2011
Episodes may prove to be the zenith of television’s obsession with making television about making television. It was certainly a handy primer for anyone who fell asleep around 2000 (perhaps during My Hero; you are forgiven) and missed all the... Read more... |
True Stories: Joan Rivers - A Piece of Work, More4Wednesday, 10 November 2010
This bit was at the end, but it might as well have been at the beginning. Or, really, just bannered across the bottom of the screen all the way through: "I am a performer. That is my life. That is what I am. That's it."Thus Joan Rivers explained her... Read more... |
The Trip, BBC TwoTuesday, 02 November 2010
There’s an interesting back story to The Trip. Before Rob Brydon was “discovered” by Steve Coogan’s Baby Cow production company in 2000, he was a workaday comic and Coogan was then at the height of his Alan Partridge-induced success. Since then... Read more... |
Whites, BBC TwoTuesday, 28 September 2010
Those of us who occasionally still wake abruptly at 3am, a cool, clammy film of sweat creeping across our brow, as we recollect the full horror of Lenny Henry’s Chef! (God, that cruelly mocking exclamation mark), could be forgiven for approaching... Read more... |
The King is Dead, BBC ThreeFriday, 03 September 2010
It's not that I feel like a middle-aged fuddy duddy exactly - although I was even almost too old for The Word and I'm clearly not the target audience for BBC Three. But if I were still in the 16-34 age group - even at its most juvenile end - frankly... Read more... |
Dinner for SchmucksThursday, 02 September 2010
There's a fascination that comes with films/ plays/ you choose the art form that contain within them their own critique: the sort of thing you find, for instance, in Chekhov done badly when one character or another opines about how "boring"... Read more... |
Edinburgh Fringe: Shakespeare - The Man from Stratford/ Mick Ferry/ John GrantWednesday, 18 August 2010
The premise of Jonathan Bate’s one-man play, directed by Tom Cairns, is simple but surprisingly effective: a trawl through the seven ages of Shakespeare, from babe to box, told through a mixture of biographical narrative illuminated by relevant... Read more... |
Grandma's House, BBC TwoTuesday, 10 August 2010
There are many for whom Simon Amstell can do no wrong. He is clever, he is funny, and he fronted Never Mind the Buzzcocks. What’s more, although his appearance suggests a cute, geeky vulnerability, his exquisite sarcasm can skewer the most inflated... Read more... |
