We had great hopes for Friday night here at TV Scoop. New HIGNFY and Peep Show, and perhaps most hotly anticipated of all, a new sketch show from comedy legends Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse – their first for eight years. What new characters could we look forward to from the men who created the famous DJs Smashie and Nicey? What incisive social observations have they been cooking up for the past eight years? How quickly would our sides split and our wee issue forth unbidden?
Well wise men say "you can never go back" and Harry and Paul would have done well to heed those words if this first taste of what’s to come is anything to go by. Ruddy Hell is putting it mildly.
Let’s get the good bits out of the way first. Bono and The Edge. Some funny lines, good impersonations. As Simon Cowell might have said "I’m not jumping out of my chair or anything, but it was alright."
The Posh Scaffolders – nice twist but again hardly bite-the-floor funny. Antiques shop "I Saw You Coming" probably the best of a bad bunch, spoilt by overuse of the catchphrase shop name. I mean, I’ve heard of dumbing down but come on, we get the message. Less is more, and the less I hear "I saw you coming" the more I’ll like it, although I’ve got an awful feeling I’ll be hearing it twice per sketch for the rest of the series.
For the rest of it, a bit like third season Little Britain: you want to laugh but it’s just not funny any more. Fat Kids Jamie and Oliver – got the point after the second shop and the "Jamie? Oliver?" use-it-once- then-throw-it-away punchline was definitely not worth the wait. Nelson Mandela selling alcopops – surreal but not in a good way. Peskovitch the ever diving footballer, way too predictable and unoriginal. The High Ranking Surgeons? Green Wing did the operating room banter one thousand times better. A sketch that depends so heavily on the worn out old posh accents should have been chucked out at the ideas stage. Yawn. The Café Polski waitresses? Sad.
But if "sad" was as bad as it got, it may have been salvagable. Descending from plain old boringly unfunny to actual cringing embarrassment with sketches like The Computer Billionaires and Laurel and Hardy in Brokeback Mountain made me want to desert this sinking ship along with the rats.
There’ll be some characters we haven’t seen yet, so it may be worth tuning in one more time. Watching the death of a legend is never easy though.
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I watched this and have to say it was very hit and miss. Might just be me but maybe television comedy has grown up since Kevin and Perry.
I think there was just enough in this to give us hope – sketch shows always take a while to bed in, and even the very best ones are hit and miss.
They seemed to be concentrating on coming up with funny situations rather than funny characters though… the only really character-based sketches were the posh surgeons (not funny), that South African (?) Nathan Barley-type in the gym (raised a smile), the scaffolders (as you say, funny, but I don’t see much mileage) and the American couple. I thought that was one of the better sketches – really recognisable characters there. I don’t think we need to get out the funeral gear just yet.
It made me laugh sporadically, but I generally was watching the whole show wanting some kind of punch line or decent conclusion to the sketches, there was some humorous ideas, but alot of the sketches just didn’t progress enough beyond funny ideas.
Has the Curse of Enfield rubbed off on Whitehouse? I didn’t think it was TOO bad until I read all these comments. Now I realise it was bloody awful.
That Laurel and Hardy sketch was actually pretty embarrassing. Enfield’s show for Sky had the same level of smut and the man frankly ought to be taken out and given a good horsewhipping. What on earth was Paul Whitehouse thinking of, agreeing to be involved?
I thought it was terrible. The occasional giggle but most of it was absolute rubbish. Talk about scraping the bottom of the barrel!
Paul Whitehouse should hang his head in shame. He never had to stoop this low before, but he must have felt he was helping a mate who was on the skids, and fair play to him, it was a nice gesture to try and give Harry a much needed boost. The result – sadly – was one of the most appalling programmes ever to be transmitted into our homes.
I’ve only just realised this is a new show. I was catching the tail end of it before something else (Wossie?) and assumed it was some 1980′s repeat. Pretty awful the bits I did see.