spoof
Jasper Rees
Several years ago the film career of Simon Pegg was launched by Shaun of the Dead, a comic tribute to the low-budget killer-zombie flick. Pegg has long since moved on to bigger, if not always better, things. Without him the film’s producers have returned to the same thematic patch, but with one crucial difference. This time the invading force is stalking not white middle-class slackers in their thirties but a tooled-up posse of teenage boys from the ‘hood. It feels like a much fairer fight.Earlier on this week on Front Row there was much talk of so-called negative stereotyping in Attack the Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Simon Pegg and Nick Frost have come a long way from Spaced, the Channel 4 sitcom Pegg created with Jessica Hynes (then Stevenson). When it was canned after two series in 1999 and 2001, Spaced - a very funny and edgy comedy about a group of assorted idlers and oddballs - assumed cult status; now More4 are unashamedly cashing in on Pegg and Frost’s Hollywood debut, PAUL, by repeating Spaced on Sunday nights, which is good news all round.PAUL is Pegg and Frost’s third movie collaboration after Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, both entertaining, feel-good bromances that spoofed zombie movies and Read more ...
kate.bassett
Will Adamsdale was so sweat-drenched by the end of his character-comedy show Jackson's Way – on the night I saw it at the Soho Theatre – that you might think he had just emerged from a frantic triathlon swim. Actually, he is performing a marathon of sorts: the Jacksathon, 26 gigs in as many days in various venues across London.He was dripping with perspiration primarily because the venue's studio was sweltering. That no punters went into heat-rage meltdown says a lot for Adamsdale's personableness – which isn't obliterated by his onstage persona being a manic, self-promoting American life Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Frankie Boyle’s Tramadol Nights is an interesting beast. A mix of stand-up, sketches and cartoons, it’s neither fish nor fowl, but many will certainly find it foul - with the comic’s penchant for sexually explicit material, unPC humour and determinedly bad-taste jokes, it’s bound to upset some viewers. But that’s why Channel 4 poached him from the BBC in the first place and have put his name in the title.His acerbic humour on Mock the Week gained a devoted following - but also the opprobrium of the BBC Trust over a number of offensive gags, after which it was only a matter of time before Read more ...
Sam Marlowe
“It’s this ghost they’re talkin’ about. I’m feelin’ an emanation meself. Unless I ‘ad too many pickled eggs last night.” If that’s the sort of crack that tickles your fancy, you’ll find plenty to make you chuckle in Ken Hill’s spoofish take on H G Wells’s novella, first presented at Theatre Royal Stratford East in 1991. Should you also have a taste for rather well-worn magic tricks, you might find Ian Talbot’s new production positively transporting. If, however, like mine, your sides remain stubbornly unsplit and the stage illusions fail to elicit from you the requisite gasps of wonderment, Read more ...
Veronica Lee
By chance, two comics with a penchant for rock‘n’roll have been strutting their stuff at opposite ends of the capital in the same week. First, Bolton funnyman Peter Kay was giving it his all on stage at the O2 on the Greenwich peninsula, and now Bill Bailey begins a two-month-long residency at the Wyndham’s Theatre in the West End. Music buffs both - but in Bailey’s case there are no air guitars as he’s an accomplished musician, and the stage is filled with stringed instruments and keyboards.But it would be slightly misleading to describe Bailey as a musical comic, as a large part of his act Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Only part-way through a mammoth stadium tour that began last April and continues until next autumn (and which he insists will end on 15 October at the MEN Arena in Manchester, where he once worked as an usher), Peter Kay is still having to add dates as they sell out almost the instant they're announced. He’s a phenomenon that even Michael McIntyre and Jimmy Carr - no slouches in stadium-show sales themselves - must be envious of.I must confess myself a huge fan, and last night it was a real pleasure to see Kay live for the first time in several years at the O2 (formerly the Millennium Dome). Read more ...
Veronica Lee
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 Brydon has become a household name, not least for his role as Uncle Bryn in Gavin and Stacey, while Coogan these days features in the media more for his, er, interesting private life than his undoubted comedy genius, which some critics suggest has been on the wane.In 2005, director Michael Winterbottom brought the two comics together in A Cock and Bull Read more ...
Jasper Rees
They always say that women over a certain age are, in televisual terms, extinct. Well, it seems that science is going to have to get back to the drawing board. Palaeontological reports are coming in from last night of strange terrestrial sightings - sightings of creatures whose skeletal remains were long since thought to be fossilising in the Jurassic substrata known as US cable. And not just one. People caught fleeting glimpses of the Trinnysaurus and the Susannadactyl while others say they saw a Nigellatops chomping greedily in her own pastures. But they can't quite be sure.Yes, plummy Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Felicity Fitz-Frisky and Hansel Amadeus Mannish (aka Laura Corcoran and Matthew Jones) describe their act as “twisted pop cabaret” but that doesn’t begin to encapsulate a show that expertly parodies modern music. An easy target, you think, but this duo bring real singing and musical talent, plus a deliciously bitchy touch to the subject.Frisky and Mannish first came to prominence at the 2009 Edinburgh Fringe, where School of Pop was a breakout hit with almost universal five-star reviews and quickly became the must-see show of the festival. Now they are touring with their follow-up show, The Read more ...
Jasper Rees
No modern comedy worth its salt misses the chance to keep you chortling as the end credits roll. Bloopers, bleeps and assorted outtakes off the cutting-room floor generally provide the fare. In The Other Guys we take a different tack. Whizzy graphics illustrate the extent to which corporate greed has raped the American economy. It’s powerful stuff. The only wonder is what it’s doing bolted onto a film without a serious bone in its body. Take the following gag about speeding to a crime scene in a Prius. If you find it offensive, you should certainly avoid the movie and maybe the rest of this Read more ...
theartsdesk
Rob Rouse is one of those hugely likeable comedians guaranteed to make you laugh and so it proves with The Great Escape, prompted by his family’s recent move to the Peak District, an expertly crafted autobiographical narrative with lots of fresh observational comedy thrown in for good measure.Rob Rouse, Underbelly ****
Although the Peak District has a slightly lower crime rate than south London, Rouse tells us drily, there’s still plenty going on that would shock their previous neighbours, including dirty dancing by septuagenarians at weddings and a bit of dogging in the local layby. Rouse Read more ...