Friday 22 May 2009

Friday! Night! Kicks!

Friday night telly isn't what it used to be. It used to be the case that the BBC and Channel Four would do strive to outdo each other by putting out the very best comedy shows they could muster. Father Ted, Friends (no, it was good when it started, shut up), Frasier, Friday Night Live, QI, Absolutely, Vic Reeves Big Night Out, The Friday Night Armistice, Hippies (again, no, it was good, you're wrong), Black Books, The IT Crowd, The Adam & Joe Show, Peep Show, TV Offal, A Bit Of Fry and Laurie, Fist of Fun, KYTV, The All-New Alexei Sayle Show 2 and many others that we'll kick ourselves later on for not mentioning have all seen new episodes going out on Friday nights in the past. What do we have on the Friday night schedule at the moment?

A 'best of' compilation show of Wipeout, which was only on a few bloody weeks ago. And to compound matters, the links by Richard Hammond were seemingly recorded at the same time as his original links (though there isn't a new commentary), and if you're going to do this sort of thing it really ought to be unexpurgated coverage of the Big Balls obstacle, from every contestant who took part and nothing else, because that's the best bit. Frankly, they should have listened to us and flown everyone to Japan to take part in Takeshi's Castle instead. Have I Got News For You?, back for its 935th series, and now with a massive 90% reduction in the panel just laughing at clips from YouTube. Thing is, if you like the show, you're more likely to watch the longer edit on Saturday nights, because that includes all the business with soundchecks and retakes. So, why bother with the Friday night edit? Similarly, QI XL. (Yes, we know more people watch the Friday night versions. Leave us alone.) Reggie Perrin, which we'll save comment on for now because we've not watched any of the show since episode one. But hey, we haven't felt compelled to watch any of it since episode one, so "go" "figure".

Meanwhile, on Channel Four: Gordon Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares USA. Well, you could always close your eyes and imagine the voiceover by Gordon Kennedy is a really long-winded Absolutely sketch. Oh, and a film.

Well, thanks to YouTube's Applemask (who, we're now going to speculate, fights crime on the mean streets of Uttoxeter whilst concealing his identity with a mask that looks like a Golden Delicious) here's something to watch. It's all three parts of his In The Face look at ITV continuity in the South West of England over the years. We like it, and if you don't, you're doing it wrong.







Mask-o has also recently filed similarly lovely reports on Granada and TV-am, but we'll embed those when we're looking for another easy upd... er, a new opportunity to offer alternative viewing to disgruntled terrestrial viewers. Or, you could visit his YouTube profile, which is here, which pretty much prevents us from getting another update out of them. Hey ho, they're well worth watching all the same.
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Applemask said...

Now how would I get TSW in Uttoxeter? I'm a Cornish lad.

Mark X said...

Tsk. If you fought crime in your own part of the country, your identity might easily be uncovered, hence the 'going to another area' thing. It's your superhero USP. Also, I don't actually know where Uttoxeter is.

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