TV Review: Life of Riley, BBC One, Thursday, 8 January, 8pm

By johnberesford on January 9th, 2009 12 comments

Canned laughter. The bane of my life. I once read this French philosophy book (don’t worry, I don’t make a habit of it) that said canned laughter took all the fun out of watching TV because it feels like the TV didn’t need you anymore. With canned laughter, the TV can hoot at its own jokes. After watching Life of Riley (BBC One, Thursday, 8 January, 8pm), TV can keep it and stick it up it’s corn-hole. Life of Riley is insipid shit, badly acted and, in one of the weirdest TV things ever, filled with flanged canned laughter.

Now, for those of you who aren’t au-fait with the music tech term of ‘flanging’, let me explain. *Clears throat* Flanging is an audio effect that occurs when two identical signals are mixed together, but with one signal time-delayed by a small and gradually changing amount, usually smaller than 20 milliseconds. This produces a swept comb filter effect: In essence, it makes a noise sound like it’s coming from down a drain… which is, precisely where this show resides. It’s not such much looking at the stars from the gutter, more, face-down arse-up in the sewer.

This show reeks of a crap team of crap American writers peddling crap jokes and stories so blindingly obvious that you can see them coming a mile off, on fire, shrieking in agony, wearing a ‘wacky’ Christmas ties, sending off flares and being chased by an army of one-man-bandmen. It’s woefully acted too. The baby of the show, less than a year old, was required only to sit and look nonplussed. By that token, the little fucker out-acted the rest of the cast. By a country mile. Hell, the kid probably filled his nappy and sicked up Cow & Gates and still out-shone the assembled lovies. Here’s an example of one of the jokes. Caroline Quentin “Look. I’m really good at blinking.” Cue, some blinking. End of joke.

It’s mindbendingly awful. It’s staggering that someone gave a green-light to this. I know there’s a market for family-friendly comedy shows. My Family, as bad as it is, works in the slot it’s in… and with Robert Lindsay and Zoe Wannamaker, at least there’s a little chemistry. However, Life of Riley is devoid of charm, character, performance, deftness, warmth, fun, the feeling of spontaniety… all the ingredients of a good sitcom. In fact, this show is devoid of the ingredients required to make a passable CBBC show. This is a sub-standard attempt at light-entertainment. Shite-entertainment more like.

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Category: Comedy, TV Reviews
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MB

Life Of Riley may be awful (sooo bad), however you really need to discover a bit more about “canned laughter” (Graham Linehan’s blog is a good place to start). That was not canned laughter on that episode – Life Of Riley was recorded in front of a live audience at Pacific Quay Studios.
digger

And it wasn’t team written either. So way to go on getting your facts straight.
Jeff Neff

Who gives a toss if its recorded in front of a live audience or not? the show was still utter [post moderated]! as for Caroline Quentin, gee whiz (as the writer would probably say) why are the beeb still trying to find a job for this sorry [post moderated]?? do they owe her something or does she have some seriously juicy [post moderated] on the director general??
she was in two hit shows a million years ago… “Men Behaving Badly” where she was riding on the talent of Martin Clunes and “Jonanthan Creek” by riding on the talents of “Alan Davies”! Why the hell doesnt she just give up and face the fact that she herself has no talent whatsoever? and MacDonalds do give their staff free burgers to take home at the end of their shift!!
Mark

When the audience was splitting their sides nearly every second within the first 2 minutes, while Caroline Quentin was eating cereal in an oversized bowl… I was wondering if they were watching something else or just high on something. It sort of alienated me to the show instantly and made me feel that I had perhaps had a sense of humour bypass operation that I was un aware of.

If the writers can get this level of response from an audience with very little effort, then what’s the point in writing something clever ? If it was canned laughter, then that would explain it.

I think they were trying way too hard to hit the ground running with this show and it didn’t work, but it may be worth letting it run 1 or 2 series first. The first episodes of all show like this are pretty naff. Unfortunately that trend tends to continue these days…
http://myspace.com/chriswade16 Chris

Coming from the point of view of a film degree student, I have just finished watching an episode of this (Thursday 29th Jan) and never heard of the show before. I just flicked over when it was starting, and let me tell you, I cannot physically believe how this was actually able to be shown on TV, especially BBC1. I think if a BBC12 was invented, it may just be able to squeeze in a daytime slot.

Seriously, all jokes could be guessed way off, acting was so terrible it was like watching a school play. Overacted, huge gestures, and unrealistic actions of the characters, especially the mother. Stealing kids lunches and giving her baby a dog biscuit, come on…

Untasteful, poorly produced, and an awfully edited pile of crap that lacks even less laughs than the wrong door, yes, WORSE than the wrong door if it’s possible, but at least even that is on BBC3.
Sarah

Ok the sitcoms a bit sh** – ok truely sh** – but I think the kids are really good – especially the son – hes gona be good – you just wait and see…
george davies

After watching a couple of episodes of The Life of Riley,all I can say is what sort of moron wrote this drivel to describe this as a comedy is an insult to comedy writers,I am surprised that someone like Caroline Quentin would agree to star in this,comedy in this country as been going down for a while but I don’t think it can get any lower with this trash it has reached rock bottom.
Melanie

Oh come on, it wasn’t that bad… I enjoyed it, mindless tv that could make you giggle. Now everybody calm down.
janine

Seconding the “Caroline, why?!?” sentiment. She was the best thing about Jonathan Creek, and her radio work is consistently gold from The Masterson Inheritance to On The Blog. Maybe her gauge of what’s actually funny has gone awry. Maybe she owes someone a lot of money. Can’t imagine what else could have induced her to act in this monstrosity.

I think in about a year’s time she’s going to talk about this show the way that Jessica Hynes talks about “According To Bex”… worst decision ever, don’t know what I was thinking, fired my agent.
Andy P

It may be recorded in front of a live audience – but that doesn’t mean the ‘laughter’ you are hearing is coming from the people that are watching. It is impossible to believe that anyone would find this inane program remotely amusing enough to laugh at any of it.
Having said that the individual performances are quite good-it just insults’ the viewers intelligence by trying to give the impression its material we should also be laughing at.
Kizza

I watched it for about 3 minutes… that’s all I could bear. It’s complete and utter tosh. I can only imagine that the writer(s?)knows someone high up in the BBC who green-lighted this appalling insult to taste and intelligence.
Anonymous

it is DREADFUL! Embarassing. I feel sorry for Caroline Quentin.

they gotta pull the plug sometime, right?? bring back flipping Waterloo Road! (even…)