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British Comedy

It's Online and It's Free, So Why Aren't You Watching 'Smack the Pony'?

by | March 13th, 2013

If you read Splitsider, you’ve probably got one or two favorite British comedy series that you’ve watched through and through, that you’re always eager to push on someone who hasn’t seen them. Mine is one that doesn’t come up often enough with comedy nerds, at least in my experience: It’s Smack the Pony, the female-led sketch series that ran on Channel 4 from 1999 to 2003. Popular during its run in England, Smack the Pony drew enthusiastic reviews and a handful of awards, but it doesn’t enjoy the reputation that other solid British series do. However, the entire series run is available on Hulu — that is, regular [...]

British Comedy

'The Thick of It': the Most Perfectly Obscene TV Show Ever

by | September 26th, 2012

If you were to make a chart of British influence upon the United States, a start at around 100 percent on the morning of Lexington and Concord would drift relentlessly towards the bottom right corner over time, except in one regard — television. From American Idol to The Office to Trading Spaces to Prime Suspect to America’s Got Talent to Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, our appetite for concepts coined in London remains positively colonial.

As some sort of sop to national pride, these efforts are made over in our own image of course, with new performers, writers, and creators (occasional hold-over viceroys like Simon Cowell and Piers [...]

British Comedy

Andy Samberg Almost Causes an International Incident Over Opening Ceremony

by | August 14th, 2012

Guys, remember the Olympics, guys? It ended Sunday. A lot of people did flips. Remember? Well, Andy Samberg watched it in the belly of the beast, Eng-Land, where he's shooting the BBC series Cuckoo.  It seems like he was CUCKOO for trying to cast any doubt on the Brits' Olympicing.

British Comedy

Ricky Gervais Has Entered the "Fuck U H8ers" Portion of his Career

by | April 13th, 2012

Gervais is kind of becoming the Kanye West of comedy, as both are prolific, incredibly successful, continuously lauded geniuses with heavy crown issues. So when a few people pointed out that his new character, Derek, might be offensive to the mentally disabled, he puffed out his chest and started railing against his detractors. In an interview with BBC Radio 5 Live he said, “Every single week has been the end of my career if you believe six or seven journalists. It makes no difference to me or my work. I don't care if people like it or not. I'm happy with it.” Listen to the audio [...]

British Comedy

Meet Adam and Joe, the British Comedic Duo Primed to Invade America

by | September 19th, 2011

British sci-fi action/comedy Attack the Block became a sleeper indie hit in the US after debuting at South by Southwest earlier this year.  But back in UK, its selling point for many people was the man behind it — writer and director Joe Cornish. Over the past 15 years, he and his comedy partner Adam Buxton have garnered a die-hard cult following in Britain for their silly, pop culture-infused brand of comedy.

Adam and Joe met as teenagers, sharing a love of legendary British sketch show Not The Nine O'Clock News. They began their careers by creating weird, funny videos in the mid-90s for Channel 4 (home to some of [...]

British Comedy

Channel 4 Is Likely to Order Matt Berry's 'Toast of London' to Series

by | February 15th, 2013

UK network Channel 4 is close to ordering Matt Berry's pilot Toast of London to series, British Comedy Guide reports. Fans of British comedy surely know Berry from IT Crowd, Snuff Box, Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, and just about every other amazing TV comedy to come out of England in the past decade. Toast of London stars Berry as a respected dramatic actor dealing with a career fallout after starring in a controversial play. Written by Matt Berry and Arthur Matthews (Father Ted), the pilot aired last year as a part of Channel 4's series Funny Fortnight. Channel 4 has ordered additional scripts of the show but has [...]

British Comedy

Cluub Zarathustra: British Comedy's Weirdest Secret

by | September 4th, 2012

“I had no idea who he was,” says Marc Maron on WTF. “I had to do a cram course on him… I felt like an idiot because I don’t know much about British comedy.” He was referring to Stewart Lee: one of Britain’s most interesting and integral stand-ups, perhaps best known for his against-the-grain demeanour and deadpan delivery. In a later episode, Maron also meets Lee’s contemporary, Simon Munnery, described on the podcast, not unfairly, as “different”. For the duration of both interviews, Maron seems simultaneously baffled and delighted, like a baby coming to terms with a heron.

There’s a certain flavour of British comedy [...]

British Comedy

The Alan Partridge Movie Is Coming Next August, at Least in the UK

by | June 26th, 2012

Info about the upcoming Alan Partridge movie is starting to emerge, and although it's a long way off, it's exciting that it's happening at all. It's set to start shooting in January with a release date of August 7, 2013. In the UK. It's not clear when it'll premiere in the States, but hopefully not long after that. It's been written by Peter Baynham, Steve Coogan, Armando Iannucci, Neil and Rob Gibbons and will be directed Declan Lowney. Here's how Coogan described the plot: Alan is in Norwich. It's not “Alan goes to Hollywood”; it's not “Alan invaded by aliens” or anything like that. He's on North [...]

British Comedy

Ricky Gervais Claims to Not Be Mocking the Disabled with His Obviously Disabled New Character

by | April 9th, 2012

Ricky Gervais has a new show premiering on Channel 4 in the UK on Thursday entitled Derek. In it, he plays the titular character, a nursing home employee who sure appears to have some mental disabilities of one kind or another. He's coming under some fire for making fun of the disabled, but he defended himself by saying that “Derek is a fictional character and is defined by his creator. Me. If I say I don’t mean him to be disabled then that’s it. A fictional doctor can’t come along and prove me wrong.” Which is a fair point! But it's also fair for people to assume the [...]

British Comedy

A Guide to the Hilarious World of British Panel Shows

by | July 28th, 2011

For American comedy fans, British comedy calls to mind Monty Python and The Office. But in the UK right now, stand-up is front and center (centre, actually). The hugely popular observational comic Michael McIntyre is expected to pull in £20 million ($32.5 million) next year when he tours arenas around the UK and Ireland. While stand-up can increasingly be seen on British TV, it’s on comedy panel shows that many comedians make their names.

The format of the panel show is nothing new, nor particularly British. A group of comedians and celebrities are brought together to crack wise about a topic or theme, and then points are handed out [...]

British Comedy

'Cuckoo', Andy Samberg's BBC Sitcom, Coming Back for Another Season

by | February 6th, 2013

Cuckoo, the BBC Three sitcom in which Andy Samberg plays an American hippie slacker who's the nightmare of his father-in-law, was the most popular new show on the network last year when it premiered. So it's not a huge surprise that it looks like it'll be returning for a second series later this year. It's not clear whether or not Samberg will return, but with British sitcoms generally having six-episode seasons, compared to 22 for their American counterparts, it would certainly be a much smaller commitment than playing a regular role on, say, Parks and Rec.

British Comedy

10 British Comedies You Should Be Glad You've Never Seen

by | August 27th, 2012

I'm not sure the US has ever been more enthusiastic about British comedy than it is right now. Thanks to Veep and to Hulu’s uncensored screening of The Thick of it, excitement about Armando Iannucci has reached near-Olympic levels. And just last week, HBO announced a remake of award-winning BBC sitcom Getting On, a bleak take on nursing in an underfunded hospital.

Judging by shows like these as well critical faves like The Office and cult sitcoms from Peep Show to The IT Crowd, it must seem that all UK comedy shares a certain aesthetic. It's painfully-observed, harshly-lit, darkly funny, and of course, full of swears.

But not all [...]

British Comedy

Andy Samberg to Star in the New BBC Sitcom 'Cuckoo'

by | June 4th, 2012

Andy Samberg may be done with SNL, but that doesn't mean he'll stop appearing on your TV. At least if you live in the UK. He's signed on to star in the upcoming BBC Three series Cuckoo alongside Greg Davies, the Post reported today (the news actually came out a couple months ago but this was the first we'd heard of it). He'll play "an idle young man who marries a British girl," the overprotective father of which will be played by Davies. There's no word on when the show is set to premiere, but expect the sort of short, six-episode season that's the norm over [...]

British Comedy

Spaced and the Mechanics of the Perfect Comedy Team

by | January 9th, 2012

Fans of the Three Flavours Cornetto / Blood and Ice Cream film trilogy did a spit-take when Nick Frost revealed last month that production on the long-awaited third entry could start as early as this year. The news is especially poignant considering its been a little over ten years since Frost's first project with Simon Pegg and director Edgar Wright, the short-lived cult sitcom Spaced, went off the air in the UK. And although the trio went on to become international stars together with Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, and on their own in various other film projects, their work on Spaced, about two down-on-their-luck Londoners [...]

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