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Posts tagged as british comedy

The Benny Hill Show towered over even Monty Python in terms of worldwide appeal and popularity in its hey day, which is just astounding. However, history rewards the victors and while Monty Python looms large over sketch comedy even today, Benny Hill has been reduced to a curious footnote in comedy history. While both share an enthusiasm for absurdity, Monty Python’s sketches often featured a healthy dose of cerebral satire buried within the anarchic foolishness. Hill, however, strikes modern viewers as broad and cartoonish, avoiding subtly altogether.

Make no mistake; Benny Hill was a huge comedic presence for twenty years (1969-1989) during the run of his titular The Benny [...]

British Comedy
Channel 4 Is Likely to Order Matt Berry's 'Toast of London' to Series
by Bradford Evans | 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
'The Thick of It': the Most Perfectly Obscene TV Show Ever
by Anthony Paletta | 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
Cluub Zarathustra: British Comedy's Weirdest Secret
by Robert Wringham | 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 [...]

Interviews
Talking to Simon Amstell About Coming to America, Introspective Comedy and Not Liking Twitter
by Elise Czajkowski | July 16th, 2012
British comedian Simon Amstell’s career is deeply rooted in his own anxiety and awkwarndess. His pensive, neurotic nature was explored in his 2010 stand-up special Do Nothing, where he opened with the line, “I’m quite lonely, let’s start with that.” He recently finished starring in the second season of the BBC sitcom he co-created, Grandma’s House, in which he played a pensive, neurotic comedian named Simon Amstell who is searching for greater meaning in his life.

He’s brought his new show Numb to New York for a five-week residency at Theatre 80. I caught up with him recently to discuss shameful honesty, being the new guy, and [...]

Spending Dollars
Fun Thing to Buy of the Day: The Original UK Series 'Pulling'
by Jenny Nelson | March 15th, 2013
Earlier this week a few changes were announced in the cast of ABC's comedy pilot Pulling. Mandy Moore left the pilot and the already-cast June Diane Raphael was joined by Jenny Slate and Kristen Schaal, making the Pulling into one of the more promising prospects of pilot season, at least in terms of really funny women in the cast. The show is based on the British series of the same name created by and starring Sharon Horgan (The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret) as one of three single females living in south-east London. Seasons one and two are both available on Amazon [...]

British Comedy
'Cuckoo', Andy Samberg's BBC Sitcom, Coming Back for Another Season
by Adam Frucci | 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.

Humour
Six Relatively Obscure British Comedies You May Have Missed
by Andy Beckerman | September 17th, 2012
To any comedy nerd with a knowledge of bittorrents or a region free DVD player, the following British shows aren’t necessarily obscure. But they are obscurish. Most people don’t know about them and no one has tried to fashion an American re-make for all the supposed knuckle-draggers who can’t parse slight accents or understand slang from context. And no one’s really touched them for good reason. They are, for the most part, surreal, sad, abrasive and absurd to the point of severe comedic dissonance – the feeling you get in your head from watching psychedelic fast-paced nonsense like Stella or Xavier: Renegade Angel. These shows are great and some [...]

Spending Dollars
Fun Thing to Buy of the Day: Dive Deep Into British Brilliance with 'The Steve Coogan Collection'
by Adam Frucci | August 30th, 2012
Steve Coogan is one of the funniest people on the face of the planet. Better known in his native UK than here in the States, he's nonetheless made a mark in American movies in The Trip, Tropic Thunder and Hamlet 2. But he's really at his best in his British TV shows: Knowing Me, Knowing You, I'm Alan Partridge, Saxondale and others. If you want the ultimate intro to Coogan, or are already a fan and want to own the bulk of his work, The Steve Coogan Collection is absolutely incredible. It's basically all of the British TV shows that made him a star over there, including the [...]

British Comedy
The Alan Partridge Movie Is Coming Next August, at Least in the UK
by Adam Frucci | 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
It's Online and It's Free, So Why Aren't You Watching 'Smack the Pony'?
by Drew Mackie | 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 [...]

Merry Old England
Inside Britain's Growing Comedy Crisis
by Elise Czajkowski | January 14th, 2013
For the past few years, America has been experiencing a spectacularly creative comedy boom that continues to grow. But in the UK, the comedy scene may be heading in the other direction. For the past decade, live and televised comedy have been big business in Britain. Stand-up shows like Live at the Apollo and Michael McIntyre’s Comedy Roadshow brought rising talent to mainstream attention, and panel shows established a wide pool of popular comedians. This led to massive theatre tours and hundreds of standup DVDs released every Christmas. But like all bubbles, it was bound to burst, and the comedy community, particularly in London, is reeling as things [...]

Brilliantly Canceled
Watching the Hitler-Based Sitcom Pilot (Yes, Really) 'Heil Honey I'm Home'
by Matt Schimkowitz | September 10th, 2012
Sometimes TV shows drag their unfunny, uninteresting, yet highly rated feet across our living rooms for years. “Who let this happen?” we ponder as our foreheads turn red from frequent smacks. Other times, the powers that be get things right. That’s where “Brilliantly Canceled” comes in, looking at the shows that didn’t pass their pilot and saved us all a ton of grief.

Upon viewing the pilot for the British comedy Heil Honey I'm Home, several questions come to mind. "What am I doing in Hitler's house? Why are his neighbors Jewish? Why is he calling me ‘honey’?" All fair concerns when discussing one of history's most vile and [...]

British Comedy
10 British Comedies You Should Be Glad You've Never Seen
by Diane Shipley | 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 [...]