Jun
15
Just Not Funny
June 15, 2007 |
Sometimes, if I get away from work in time, I find myself listening to Radio 4’s 6.30pm comedy slot. This venerable institution is the home of well-established and classic shows such as I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue and Just A Minute. Comedy quiz shows such as The News Quiz and the non-comedy ‘intellectual’ stuff such as the dreadful, pompous Quote, Unquote also figure in its traditional fare, though they now seem to have got the message on this one and put it out to pasture in the early afternoon. That Mitchell and Webb Sound is an honourable latecomer to the slot.
But increasingly there’s a tendency towards things that clearly think they’re comedy, but are in fact about as funny as having root canal work. Sometimes these are from the sitcom mould, but with the ’sit’ significantly overshadowing the ‘com’, such as Trevor’s World of Sport, in which Neil Pearson plays, wait for it, an honourable sports agent! (Ooh, my ribs have never been so tickled). Sometimes, and this is what’s inspired me to comment, it’s a ‘personality’ show, in which someone will do a stand-up routine each week, or as is more often the case, a stand-up routine punctuated by little ‘vignettes’ performed by the assembled cast to illustrate the riotously funny point of social commentary that’s being made.
The latest of these, and possibly the least funny I’ve yet been subjected to, is It’s That Jo Caulfield Again, which I’ve now heard twice, and on neither occasion did it gerenate so much as smile at any point. The Mrs heard the first of these two, and to say that he was also unimpressed would be an understatement. Sample joke; Jo’s mother finds Jo’s teenage diary and says “I don’t know who she is but she’s a slut.” I know - I’m sorry, I should have warned you that was coming so you could hold your sides in readiness.
And yet the audience apparently find this stuff riotously funny, so perhaps her body language is what sells it. I can’t think of any other explanation, because it’s certainly not the jokes… In which case it’s a fundamentally bad concept as a radio series.
How this stuff gets commissioned I can’t imagine.
Comments
3 Comments so far
canned laughter ?
There are fewer things less funny than a comedy show that, erm, you don’t find funny. I think commissioning editors have to kiss a lot of frogs…
Couldn’t agree more about Jo Caulfield. Shamefully bad.