The best comedy send ups!

4 Apr

When shows or personalities becomes successful they are almost inevitably going to end up being mocked. From the football on Sky to The Cube on ITV, nothing popular is exempt from a little gentle comedy ribbing. Of course ‘best’ is subjective, but here are six that I think are contenders for that crown. Which one will take my number one spot?

6. Doctor Who: The Curse of the Fatal Death

Steven Moffat’s first Doctor Who gig was several years before the show returned to our screens full time, writing for this parody episode for Comic Relief. In the sketch the 9th Doctor, played by Rowan Atkinson, is locked in a battle with the Master, played by Jonathan Pryce, and the Daleks. His assistant (and lover) is played by Julia Sawalha (of Press Gang fame). My favourite line is “ooh it has three settings” which is wonderfully delivered. If you haven’t seen it before then check it out – it is sublime!

Yesterday’s blog post was about Matt Smith’s portrayal of The Doctor. Feel free to check it out!

5. Posh and Becks Shopping  – Alistair McGowan’s Big Impression

Alistair McGowan’s shows were a bit hit and miss. Often the impressions were poor and the comedy failed to turn up. One of two impressions to save that show were his Richard “Welcome back!” Madeley, and his David Beckham. The latter was always good comedy value too. In this sketch David and Victoria have been arguing. (Apologies for the poor sound quality!)

4. Star Wars Special Edition Edition – Dead Ringers

As I pointed out on the Tellybrain twitter page, Star Wars has been broadcast on television and therefore qualifies to be mentioned on this TV website. This clip from Dead Ringers cleverly spoofs George Lucas’ insistence to go back and tinker with bits of the original trilogy to make it more in keeping with the prequel trilogy of the 00s.

And if you liked that, why not check out this article about the best order to view Star Wars in?

3. Football Football Football – That Mitchell and Webb Look

David Mitchell publically doesn’t like football. He takes every opportunity to tell us so, on satirical news show Ten O’Clock Live, panel show Mock the Week, and on Would I lie to You? on which he is a team captain. It’s no surprise then that his send up of the over the top Sky Sports football adverts has such a sharp sarcastic edge to it. If only I could work out the subtext behind it…

2. The Cube – The Impressions Show

Jon Culshaw has some pretty amazing impressions under his belt (and some dodgy ones too) including Steven Gerrard, Tom Baker, and Brian Cox. By far my favourite though is his Philip Schofield impression. In The Impressions Show, Culshaw has made Schofield into a character obsessed by his own entertainment show, The Cube, and in this sketch when his co-host from This Morning, Holly Willoughby, comes round for dinner things get a little out of hand.

1.  The Apprentice – That Mitchell and Webb Look

David Mitchell has already featured in this list once, and guess what? He’s back again, this time with his sidekick Robert Webb. This sketch shows us the fictional beginnings of The Apprentice (which incidentally is on tonight at 9pm on BBC One ), from dodgy pilot to a eureka executive moment. This is my favourite sketch of the lot, and it is incredibly plausible! I hope you enjoy it. 

The Official The Apprentice website

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Well, that’s your lot for tonight. How many of them had you seen? And do you agree with my choices? I’d love to hear from you so feel free to leave a comment below.

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Doctor Who: A quick look at the Eleventh Doctor, Matt Smith

3 Apr

This article contains spoilers for Doctor Who series 5 and 6. Then again, if you haven’t seen it already it’s your own bloody fault, and you should be ashamed!

Two years ago today the Eleventh Doctor, played by Matt Smith, the youngest actor to take the role, made his full debut in the first episode of the fifth series of Doctor Who, The Eleventh Hour.

In the action packed episode, the newly regenerated Doctor crash landed the smoking TARDIS into the garden of adorable little girl, Amelia Pond. Amelia used the powers invested in her as a Scot to fry all manner of foods for The Doctor, who was having post-regenerative cravings, a new sensation for him. Upstairs in her bedroom, Amelia had been hearing voices from a crack in her wall. The Doctor opened the crack using his sonic screwdriver, and the voice was revealed to be the Atraxi – some sort of prison warden race who were after an escaped convict called Prisoner Zero. Upon hearing the cloister bell, an alarm system in the TARDIS that signifies that very bad stuff is going down, he rushed back and dematerialised, after promising to the tot that he’d be back in five minutes.

Several minutes later for The Doctor, though crucially twelve years and several psychiatrists for Amelia (now Amy), he returned, and immediately realised there was an extra room hidden behind a perception filter in her house, and that Prisoner Zero was hiding inside it. The Atraxi weren’t far behind and placed the Earth in a kind of planetary force field and promised to destroy it. Rory, Amy’s boyfriend, and a nurse at the local hospital, had been taking photographs on his camera-phone of coma patients that had been talking while unconscious. The Doctor borrowed this phone and popped off to do some clever stuff with computers in Margaret Meldrew from One Foot in the Grave’s house.

After luring Prisoner Zero to the hospital, The Doctor faced off with the shape-shifting alien. The clever computer stuff was actually a virus that was spreading like wildfire, changing every clock on the planet to zero – a message to Earth’s captors aboves. The Doctor then uploaded all the photographs of the coma patients, prisoner zero’s shape shifting disguises, to every social networking site around, including Bebo. Using these clues the Atraxi followed the trail and apprehended Prisoner Zero, before flying away.

Then the Doctor, after stopping to get changed, called the Atraxi (a great big eye thing) back and berated them for daring to destroy the planet he’s so fond of. He told them it is defended and then they flew off again, scared. The Doctor then checked out his new TARDIS, which had repaired itself and given itself a brand new look (and provided toy companies a way to make loads more money), and gave it a test flight. Two minutes later for the Doctor, and two years later for Amy, the Doctor returned and without struggle convinced Amy to come and travel through time and space with him. She accepted, and as they disappeared into the vortex we found out that she was getting married…

I must say that The Eleventh Hour is one of my favourite episodes of Matt Smith’s tenure. It was funny, clever, nicely paced, looked great (the grading was superb), full of jeopardy, and as barmily plotted as ever. It’s probably the best post-regeneration story there has been in Doctor Who’s 49 year history, beating The Christmas Invasion (10th Doctor), and Robot (4th), the closest competition, hands down. But how has Smith’s Eleventh Doctor fared since then?

For me Smith’s two series have been a largely smooth ride, but with some bumpy bits too. I’ll start with the lows because I don’t like ending on a downer. This will be an unpopular opinion… but occasionally, I find the current Doctor to be a little patronising, a bit too kiddy and bit too immature for my liking. I completely get that it’s a kids show, even if some people will argue that it is ‘for families’, but I do find this particular trait a little grating. Often kids shows can be more grown up than grown up shows – look at Press Gang, for instance. Then again, as the Fourth Doctor once said ‘what’s the point of being grown up if you can’t be childish sometimes?’ Childishness is of course a quality that embodies a number of Doctors; the recorder wielding Troughton in The Three Doctors for example, or the gurning Eccleston in The End of the World. Some Doctors could pull it off, like Troughton, others couldn’t, like Eccleston. Smith for me is actually in both camps. Sometimes he gets it right, like in the early part of The Eleventh Hour with the fish fingers and custard, and sometimes he gets it wrong, like the revealing of the designer bedrooms in The Doctor, The Widow, and The Wardrobe, and all that stuff with the baby (Stormageddon) in Closing Time, both of which I thought were ever so cringe worthy.

Anyway, that’s the controversial bit out of the way. Now for the stuff I do like.

The high points for me were in The Time of Angels and Flesh and Stone the weeping angel two-parter, The Pandorica Opens and The Big Bang two part series five finale, series six openers The Impossible Astronaut and Day of the Moon and in Tom MacRae’s The Girl Who Waited. I’ve singled out these episodes as they are moments when Smith is at his best and most versatile. In these episodes he’s funny (making the angels say “comfy chairs” was a classic), he’s dark (“No. She’s not real.”), he’s arrogant (“Who takes the pandorica, takes the universe, but bad news everyone, ‘cause guess who?”) and he’s surprising (“a mysterious summons. You think I’m just going to go?”). Matt Smith’s Eleventh Doctor is at his absolute best when he challenges the audience, and shows you glimpses of the Doctor that you’re not used to seeing. He’s capable of making you laugh, making you cry, and shocking the time head off you.

If you’re a Doctor Who fan you’ll notice that six of the seven episodes listed there also star Alex Kingston as Doctor River Song, and are written by Steven Moffat (lets ignore the fact that he wrote one of the episodes that I criticised… everyone has an off day). Smith thrives with excellent writing and top notch acting talent to bounce off. Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill are very good, but Kingston is a cut above.

To summarise then, for Tellybrain, Matt Smith is an outstanding Doctor when funny, dark, arrogant, and surprising, when he’s written for by Steven Moffat and Tom MacRae (honourable mentions to Neil Gaiman, and Richard Curtis too), and when he’s opposite Alex Kingston… but he should perhaps leave off with the interior design and the babysitting!

Oh bugger, I ended on a downer… erm…  okay… why not watch the clips below that I believe show off Matt Smith at his very best.

The Eleventh Doctor being:

Funny

Dark

Arrogant

Surprising

For more information about the episodes mentioned you could visit the BBC programme pages:

The Eleventh Hour

The End of the World

The Christmas Invasion

The Time of Angels

Flesh and Stone

The Pandorica Opens

The Big Bang

The Impossible Astronaut

Day of the Moon

The Girl Who Waited

Closing Time

The Doctor, the Widow, and the Wardrobe

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Titanic could learn from Scott and Bailey

2 Apr

In yesterday’s post about Zeebox I said that drama is “a genre that demands concentration”. I’d like to amend that claim, if I may, to “good drama is a genre that demands concentration”. Bad drama longs for it but often doesn’t get it.

Titanic by Julian Fellowes (Sunday, 9pm, ITV1) longed for my attention but didn’t work hard enough to get it. Dubbed ‘Drownton Abbey’ and ‘Upstairs Drownstairs’ by critics, the series feels frightfully dull. So what’s wrong with it? It looks great, granted, with impressive sets and a decent cast, including Stephen Campbell-Moore (of The History Boys fame) and new Doctor Who girl Jenna-Louise Coleman. The problem with it is more deep-set than that. It has inherent story problems.

The nicknames mentioned above are unfair on the programmes they mock. Downton Abbey regularly captured more than ten million viewers, who loved the world, the characters, the storylines (both realistic and absurd). Similarly the new Upstairs Downstairs gets an average 6-7 million viewers per week for similar reasons.

The problem with Titanic is that I frankly do not care for the characters. There seems to be a sense of impending doom to them all, like they somehow know that their world is about to be torn to shreds. Their dialogue too, while well delivered, is ever so clunky, and the cliché counter has exploded through overuse. I half expected a ‘Good God man, pull yourself together!’ when the second class passengers burst out of their confinement to hustle for life boat space. It doesn’t help that this second instalment (of four) began again at the beginning of the tale and so we had to go through the build-up to the disaster all over again from a slightly different angle. This tactic worked for One Night last week because we only focus on one character per episode, but in Titanic it was never really clear who’s story was at the forefront, and why we needed to see it all again. It really didn’t work, and actually takes the disaster movie element out of a series which should be all about a disaster.

So if this series about the Titanic isn’t actually about the Titanic, then what is it about? Somewhat predictably, given that Fellowes wrote it, it seems to be about social standing and the British class system. Whoopdy doo! Way to suck the excitement out of a tragedy, out of a story of the failings of man, out of stories of heroism in the face of certain death. Every scene in Titanic seems to be about who is pipping who on the social ladder. Honestly, the class system in and around that period has been explored to death on TV of late, and it’s just boring me now.

Tonight at 9pm on ITV1 sees the fourth episode of the latest series of Sally Wainwright penned Scott and Bailey. Now there is a good series that demands concentration. The characters are brilliant, the dialogue sublime, and the acting is way up there. It is a detective drama that hurtles along at a decent pace. It’s a crime of the week affair with on-going serial elements throughout. Last series that serial element was about DC Rachel Bailey’s (Suranne Jones) war with love-rat-cheat-married-man-twat-ex-boyfriend  Nick Savage (Rupert Graves – Lestrade in Sherlock) which came to a satisfying conclusion in the sixth and final part when he was locked up for trying to have Rachel bumped off. All the while Rachel was constantly supported both professionally and personally by her best friend DC Janet Scott (Lesley Sharp).

If I were responsible for Titanic in the development stages, I might have suggested using Scott and Bailey for inspiration. The friendships and relationships in this Red Productions masterpiece, along with the sometimes witty, sometimes sincere dialogue, and the story of the week structure, would make for a drama you could care about. It would make for a drama that you would care so much about that your heart would be close to breaking when those you’ve loved for four weeks are caught in the middle of the ultimate tragedy.

Structurally I wouldn’t have touched the non-linear narrative style that Fellowes adopted. Instead I would have followed four sets of passengers (across thethree class systems if you really want, Julian!) each with their own warm unique crises, journeys, love stories, illicit affairs… whatever… which played out nicely over four weeks. The dialogue would be chirpier, friendlier, and less clichéd, and the four weeks would be set within a four hour time frame, from plain sailing, to grazing the ice berg, to the flooding of the lower decks, and finally the dramatic escape/sinking of the ship finale.

Oh, and I’d cast Suranne Jones and Lesley Sharp in it too, of course!

Official Scott and Bailey Website

Official Titanic Website

Watch Scott and Bailey on ITV Player

Watch Titanic on ITV Player

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Is Zeebox any good?

1 Apr

“What’s Zeebox all about then?” I hear you shout, silently, “I’ve seen the TV ads. I’ve even downloaded the app for my generic tablet device stroke smartphone, but what actually is it?” Well, I’m glad you asked, because until last week I wasn’t really sure either.

Zeebox claims on its slightly annoying television advertisements, starring a weirdly eighties looking man representing the TV, and a geeky man in a Zeebox t-shirt, that it is “the best thing to happen to TV since TV”. A bold claim then, right up there with “This will be XYZ’s best adventure yet”, and “Cooking has never got tougher than this!” The advert also claimed that Zeebox makes your viewing experience more social.

In the real world, with living rooms and sofas and people with varying degrees of body odour, I’m not a fan of social TV watching. A few weeks ago I was sitting on the edge of my battered leather sofa watching the penultimate episode of Being Human, the make or break episode that would set up the gobsmacking finale to come, when my housemate sauntered in. Moments later I was straining my very sinews to prevent myself from ripping his head off. He’s an inane inquisitor you see, a TV talker with no qualms about chatting over your favourite prog. A barrage of questions like “Who’s that?” “How can a ghost time travel?” and “When does this finish?” hit me, like an unwelcome wave of arse. Monosyllabic grunts and tuts formed the replies, but he was relentless and continued to ruin the episode. The point is I’m a firm believer that there are some aspects of TV viewing that should remain sacred.

Sceptically though, mainly to see what all the fuss was about, I recently downloaded the app for my smartphone of choice, my iPhone 4S. Seconds later I had logged into the Tellybrain Twitter and my personal Facebook account and I was away. The Tottenham Hotspur versus Swansea City Premier League football match was on Sky Sports 1 at the time, so I quickly found that on the app. There are hundreds of channels on Sky TV so it could have been an arduous task to scroll through them all. Luckily there was a ‘select by category’ option, so finding the correct channel was a doddle. At the same time I also logged into the web version of the app on my PC.

Not long after I did Tottenham scored to take the score to 3-1. This is what Zeebox looked like on the web:

And this is what it looked like on the iPhone:

The web version is actually quite impressive. It looks great and is neatly separated into useful sections. One section is a commentary of the game with minute by minute updates (although the score didn’t update immediately). The middle section is a more general Twitter timeline with tweets about football and the Premier League – new tweets sent from here automatically carry the #PremierLeague hashtag. The third section is “Live ZeeTags” which shows what the people that are watching the Premier League are talking about – I assumed that bigger tags meant more people are discussing that thing, but on reading the FAQs that doesn’t appear to be the case.

The iPhone version looks a bit more cluttered because space is limited, but has most of the same features. Unlike the desktop app though, you can’t see the minute-by-minute commentary of the game, but you can see the tweets and the zeetags (when they decide to work…!)

“So is that it? Is Zeebox just a clever TV listings app with a Twitter client built in?” I hear you ask, even more silently than before. The answer is no. Despite this social element being its USP there is much more to the app than this. Here are a few of the other features that I found quite useful or novel.

News: Though not always completely relevant, the app has a good bash at finding related news content for the programme you are watching. It’s easy to access and when it works has potential to enhance the programme you are watching.

Downloads: During a programme this will suggest relevant things for you to buy on your device. During the Spurs game it recommended iPhone games, TV Series, and fan podcasts. During a drama I would assume it would link to episodes to buy from iTunes – quite a smart way to make money, and useful too.

Start a chat: If some of your friends are watching the same programme at the same time you can start a chat and type about it to each other. It’s a bit like a chat room, or a group messenger conversation, but it could be fun in certain situations.

I see Zeebox as being a useful piece of tech when watching reality television, entertainment, sport, or even the news to enhance the viewing experience. I don’t think it will work for everything though. Having worked in TV Drama for a while, I am a disciple of consuming fiction distraction-less. I think that reading people’s tweets, chatting to friends, reading the news, and downloading additional content would get in the way of the programme and lift me out of a genre that demands concentration. I think it would be much the same for comedy too. I’m not going to delete the app, in fact I quite like it, but I’m certainly not going to use it for everything.

Official Zeebox Website

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The Voice UK versus Britain’s Got Talent

31 Mar

It’s Saturday! Time for the weekly battle between The Voice (BBC One, 7pm) and Britain’s Got Talent (ITV1, 8pm). There had been rumours for several weeks before last week’s opening instalment of both shows that there would be a scheduling clash, and that viewers would have to choose which one to watch, but this time the schedulers managed to work out a way for audiences to see both, minus a twenty minute window when both were on. Yay for (almost) good schedules! Despite the lack of a major clash, the two will still be compared in the ratings. So which fared better?

Using the overnight rating system, BGT was the most watched show of the day at 9.3 million (9.87 million if you include ITV1+1) viewers. The Voice UK wasn’t that far behind at 8.4 million. But that isn’t the whole story. During the window the BBC show came out on top quite substantially, leading the figures 8.9 million to BGT’s 6.6. (Source: The Media Guardian)

So hang on, Britain’s Got Talent was the most watched show of the day, except for when The Voice was on? Have I got that right? So which one is actually better?

Well, that’s obviously a matter of opinion. I personally enjoyed The Voice more – particularly a friend of a friend’s performance of Elton John’s Rocket Man that wowed all four ‘coaches’. I know many others will have preferred BGT, which saw the return of the Emperor of Saturday Night TV, Simon Cowell who was a noticeable absentee from last year’s X-Factor, as well as new judges David “I’m a lady” Walliams, and Alesha Dixon, who are much better suited to the format than the Hoff ever was. If it’s anything to go by – which it probably isn’t – the first ever episode of Britain’s Got Talent gained a mere 5.2 million viewers back in 2007, so in that particular battle The Voice wins hands down.

The Voice’s unique selling point is that the auditions section of the show is done ‘blind’. Each of the coaches (Will.I.Am, Jesse J, Tom Jones, and that guy from The Script) has their back to the singer and must press their button if they like the voice of the artist. It’s no doubt a fairer system and may lead to unexpected talents being found, but how did it come to this?

For well over a decade Saturdays have become synonymous with people standing on a shiny stage and singing their little hearts out. Stars in Their Eyes is the first of these types of programmes I remember. Hosted by Matthew Kelly, and later Cat Deeley, the show was perhaps the purest talent show of the lot. It wasn’t about gaining a record contract. It was about being regarded by the public (no panel of judges here!) not as the best singer, nor as the best ‘interpretation’, but as the best sound-a-like… they even used to dress the singers up to look like the artists they were covering. I still remember being gobsmacked by a brilliant Meatloaf cover who was Meatloaf the moment he walked through those smoky doors.

Next came Pop Stars and the eventual formation of short lived band Hear’say (what a genuinely awful name for a band). Pop Stars was a fun ride that threw together several artists into pop bands that would then battle through to get to the final. It was the beginnings of the record contract prize for the winners and the auditions section of the shows that would follow. Back in those days all artists would go into a private room with only the four judges for company and sing their chosen song. The judges would tell them there and then if they were through to the next round.

Pop Idol was next up and was probably my favourite of the lot. In the first series of the show there were several stars (Darius and Rik Waller included) leading right up to a brilliant finale between soulful Will Young (my mum loves him) and boyish Gareth Gates. Will Young deservedly won it, and was then forced to sing a Westlife cover as his winning song.

Around the same time Fame Academy was failing dismally on the BBC. This was a mash up of Big Brother (you could view the contestants in their accommodation through spy cameras on Freeview) and Pop Idol. It wasn’t great, and after only two series (the latter of which pretty much got rid of the Big Brother stuff) the show was axed. Still, it managed to launch the career of Lemar, which is something I guess… and David Sneddon…

Pop Stars came back soon after with a new name, Pop Stars: The Rivals. The new name also came with a twist on the old format. They would still be seeking to find a new pop band, but this time it was boys versus girls. The final was between One True Voice, a kind of Westlife-lite, and Girls Aloud. You’ve heard of them? Girls Aloud obviously wiped the floor with One True Voice and their debut single ‘Sound of the Underground’ was Christmas number one in 2002. Despite creating the most popular girl group since the Spice Girls, the show didn’t return.

In 2004 Simon Cowell’s The X Factor was launched. Cowell had had a hand in a number of the aforementioned shows, but it was this one that catapulted him to multi-millionaire status. This was the first of the shows to really capture the imagination of the tabloid press. Not a day would go by without an X-Factor rumour, controversy, interview, or some sort of publicity. It was very cleverly marketed, and is today one of the highest rated programmes around. Last year’s series averaged a massive 12 million viewers – and even beat the Royal Wedding in terms of figures.

Another Cowell show, Britain’s Got Talent, began in 2007. While chiefly famous for discovering Susan Boyle, it is more than just a singing competition, it is a talent show (which also ‘discovered’ dance troupe Diversity).  The criticisms surrounding BGT are that it is an unkind ‘freak show’ that breathes on public humiliation. It is for this reason, apparently, that The Voice UK was created.

The Voice UK appears to be trying to appeal to those that are fed up with pointing and laughing at people, and trying to create a more inclusive vibe. It’s certainly seemed to manage this, but perhaps at the expense of any real jeopardy. Without this jeopardy the show could begin to feel a bit light weight in a few weeks’ time. Will it be a long-term contender to Syco’s empire? Only time will tell.

The Voice – Official Website

Britain’s Got Talent – Official Website

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One Night the schedulers went mad

30 Mar

Tonight sees the culmination of Paul Smith’s four part slice of life serial One Night. For those that have yet to see it, each of the four parts explores four characters’ crises on one  particular night. Ted, played by Douglas Hodge, let the pressures of 21st century life get to him in part one. Part two saw Rochelle played by Georgina Campbell finding out about the dangers of forbidden love on the estate. Carol, played by the wonderful Jessica Hynes, struggled with the burdens of single parenthood in the third installment. And tonight 12 year old child Alfie, played by the debutant Billy Matthews, comes to terms with the responsibilities of growing up before his time.

The series isn’t perfect. At times it feels laboured, a little fake, and occasionally lightweight, but on the whole it is an enjoyable four-parter  with big stars and newbees alike acting their socks off. It certainly didn’t, in my view, warrant the graveyard scheduling that the BBC gave it. Not only does that show a lack of faith in a script that has been discussed, developed, and drafted with love by the dedicated team at BBC Drama in the White City complex, but it also shows disrespect to the director, to the actors, and to the crew who fought slavishly to get the programme to the screen. The schedulers should be ashamed with their decision not to strip this at 9pm. Still, at least it was stripped. It’ll be interesting to take a look at the ratings for One Night over the four nights compared with the average for the 22:35 – 23:35 time slot.

You could do much worse than to watch tonight’s episode. Billy Matthews in his debut performance on screen is masterful. He’s definitely one to watch out for and I predict big things for the boy. My particular favourite bit in tonight’s episode is when he skillfully dispatches the woman from the Social Service. Great performance. In November I interviewed him at his house for the BBC and he told me (off camera) that his next big TV drama is written by another brilliant Billy – Shakespeare’s Henry IV. If you want to see the interview you can find it on the BBC website here.

Please do check out One Night on the BBC I-Player.

Episode One – Ted

Episode Two – Rochelle

Episode Three – Carol

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