sitcom
Gary Naylor
Now 45 years in the past, its dazzling star gone a decade or so, The Long Good Friday is a monument of British cinema. Its extraordinary locations, caught just before London’s Docklands were transformed forever, speaks to a past world. But the wheeler-dealer, Harold Shand, played by Bob Hoskins at the peak of his powers, left many ancestors, from his near contemporary, Arthur Daley, to a few who have ascended to the highest Offices of State.One such, conjured into life by Robin Hawdon in the early 90s, is Arthur Bullhead (of course, Arthur Bullhead) owner of The Bunty, moored on the Thames Read more ...
Hugh Barnes
A quarter of an hour into The Problem With People, there’s a 15-second clip of Bill Forsyth’s Local Hero – and it’s the best thing about this spectacularly unfunny comedy co-written by its American star, Paul Reiser (Mad About You, The Kominsky Method, Stranger Things).In the clip, a young Peter Capaldi collects Peter Siegert from Aberdeen airport and they head north through the Grampian mountains in a brand new beige Corolla. In similar fashion, the real star of The Problem With People is the picturesque Irish countryside, which director Chris Cottam captures handsomely in a series of Read more ...
stephen.walsh
So why not rewrite The Magic Flute with a new text and a heavily reconstructed plot? After all, the original was just a pantomime, albeit one that embodied one or two big issues of the day (1791), but essentially popular theatre with a text by a well-known comic actor, Emanuel Schikaneder, who sang and acted in the first production.Remodel the plot, by all means. Make Sarastro and the Queen of the Night into an estranged couple who have fallen out over the education of their daughter Pamina. Make Tamino and Pamina into childhood playmates who have lost touch and Papageno into the former bird- Read more ...
Gary Naylor
Max is big and black and Tyler is slight and (very) white, an odd couple trapped in a dual-control car as Max barks out his instructions and Tyler prepares for his driving test. If their relationship is to get started, like the clutch of the Vauxhall Corsa, it’s going to have to find its biting point. When the men reveal a little more of their insecurities, it does and we’re away.Will Jackson was commissioned by the Bush Theatre to write this play and it’s a delight to see Clutch given a run in its studio space. It may not be the boldest concept (there are strong vibes of a 1970s BBC pilot Read more ...
Gary Naylor
"Off-grid" wasn't a thing in the mid-'70s. Sure, people planted a few potatoes in the garden and pottered about a bit in an allotment, but nobody went the whole hog. The rat race was certainly a thing though, a fertile seam for comedies like The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin. John Esmonde and Bob Larbey had the brainwave of combining the two in the BBC sitcom The Good Life - that and casting Felicity Kendal of course.The veteran writer-director Jeremy Sams takes us back to Tom and Barbara’s momentous decision to live off the land - in Surbiton - and their love-hate relationship with Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Fawlty Towers: For the RecordA special, limited-edition vinyl release of the entire comedy series written by John Cleese and Connie Booth to celebrate the BBC sitcom's 40th anniversary. The 12 episodes offer a masterclass in comedy writing and performance – even if they now come with a trigger warning, that some of humour is “of its time”. Much of the special linking narration for the six white vinyl LPs – by hapless waiter Manuel (Andrew Sachs) – is unique to the vinyl version and hasn’t been available since the original pressings. As well as Cleese appearing as harassed hotelier Basil Read more ...
Veronica Lee
This engaging sitcom created by comedian Holly Walsh has had a long gestation: this, the pilot episode, was first broadcast back in 2017 but Walsh's pregnancy meant that the six-part series commissioned at the time was filmed last year.The show was prompted by a chance remark a friend made to Walsh about a man whose double life was discovered only when he died, and the pilot begins with Colin Walcott's family gathering in a crematorium for his funeral after his death from a heart attack when his double life was exposed. It's not his bigamy that Walsh and co-writer Pippa Brown focus on, but Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Since Donald Trump's election as US President in 2016, I imagine satirists have slowly lost the will to live – as nothing they can write can outdo his buffoonery. But when Greg Daniels (creator of the American version of The Office) and Steve Carell (its star) announced they were inspired to write Space Force from one of his ideas, it augured well.Trump never appears in Space Force, but his presence is felt in odd nods to the tweeting president, or his command to get “boots on the Moon by 2024”, or “boobs on the Moon", as the fictional president here tweets (but it could have been Trump Read more ...
Markie Robson-Scott
DI John Major (Daniel Mays) has been dead a year, shot in the line of duty, though we’re far from that series in terms of tone. Now he’s back at the London Met, artificially augmented, but not very intelligently. If anything he’s a bit more shit than he was before, as one of those involved in the shooting observes.“Think of me as Oscar Pistorius,” he encourages his wife Kelly (Anna Maxwell Martin) who’s strangely reluctant to welcome the new part-AI him back home, probably because she and his partner DI Roy Carver (Stephen Graham) are in a relationship. In fact on the night he was shot, they’ Read more ...
Jill Chuah Masters
Watching Run, HBO’s newest seven-part series, feels like off-the-rails escapism: it’s a fast-paced thriller about dropping everything, chasing intimacy and courting danger. It’s a vicarious adventure centred on a woman who has spent too long stuck at home. Run has hit our screens at the best possible time.The series starts in a parking lot. Ruby Richardson (Merritt Wever) — the thriller’s presumed heroine — is a yoga-going, 4WD-driving suburban mum. Might not sound thrilling, but the atmosphere is there: from the opening shot the air is thick with tension. Ruby ends a call with her husband Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Spencer Jones, a clownish stand-up, has been responsible for some the cheeriest, daftest and most heart-warming shows at the Edinburgh Fringe, where he has twice been nominated in Dave's Edinburgh Comedy Awards (ECA). Others may know him from his scene-stealing turn in Upstart Crow, where he channels Ricky Gervais in the character of Will Kempe. Now, in Matt Morgan's new comedy, he plays Leslie Winner who, despite his best intentions, is forever finding himself in a pickle.Last night's opening episode of this six-parter introduced us to the ironically named Leslie, drifting through life Read more ...
Jill Chuah Masters
“I am not intense.” That declaration arrives early in Feel Good, the new Channel 4 and Netflix romantic comedy fronted by comedian Mae Martin, who plays a fictionalised version of herself. Over Mae’s shoulder, we see a literal trash fire. She’s lit up the evidence of a past drug addiction. It smoulders in the background while she smoulders in the front.This scene is Feel Good in miniature: it encapsulates Martin's brand of vulnerable, quirky comedy, pinned to her appeal as a character and a creator. The series is easy to watch and easy to like. Still, Feel Good has a hindrance. For a Read more ...