Happy Festivus, Everyone!*

(*Okay, Festivus is technically on the 23rd. Still, shush.)

Have a Merry Multi-Denominational Midwinter Festival, everyone! Back on Boxing Day, or possibly the 27th, hangovers permitting.

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YouTubeXLUSA: More Televisual Wonder Than You Could Shake The Washington Monument At

Extending our run through of complete programmes that can be found on YouTube for an extra day, we’re going to take a quick dash through American programmes available on the streaming service. To mark the occasion, here’s a photo of Tiffany.

Just in case you weren’t getting depressed how old you are today, we’d just like to point out that Tiffany is now 40 years old. No need to thank us, gramps.

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The Charts Show: A Tale Of Two Sitcoms (BBC Two Comedy Zone Week 7)

Yep, it’s taken us until now to realise that adding an ‘s’ to the title of this ratings-based strand makes it work much more effectively. See, now it works as both a pun on the title of the 1980s pop rundown show AND as a description of the content of each blog post, as in “the charts show that [whatever we’ve decided is our version of the facts]”*. Some may argue that “The Chart Shows” would be a better title, considering that each update only contains a singular chart, but until they work out our password for Windows Live Writer, there’s nothing they can do about it. NOTHING. (It’s a really clever password, too.) (That’s also a clever pun, our Windows Live Writer password is ‘password2’.) (Oh bugger.)

ANYWAY. It’s no wonder that Warwick Davis’ character was always so defensive, given the way every single stranger he encountered during the run of LIFE’S TOO SHORT decided to be so needlessly unpleasant to him, is it? Conversely, the Christmas episode of REV followed on from the preceding six episodes of the series by being absolutely bloody lovely and excellent. It did irk us a little when the writers went for the clichéd device of “having children do a swear in front of a well-meaning adult”, but that aside it was a genuinely heartwarming episode. Yay.

ON WITH THE OVERNIGHT RATINGS AND THE CHART THEREOF.

It’s probably fair to account that the final episodes of each series aired on a different day to the remainder of the series for each show, and both performed about as well as could be expected after recent weeks. The relatively underpromoted Rev finishes 28.3% ahead of Life’s Too Short ratings-wise. (R. Gervais’s voice: “Aaah, but the BBC have just told me that 7.2 million viewers watched the show in the window of Dixons, so I’m still popular and brilliant.”)

It’ll be interesting to see if LTS performs well enough on HBO** to warrant a second series. The series airs in the USA from the 19th of February. It’s possibly telling that LTS featured (for the most part) British celebrities that the US audience will be familiar with – such as Sting, Cat Deeley, or Right Said Fred. (UNRELATED FACT:  Gervais and Merchant commendably kept in most UK-centric references for the US edits of Extras. While the Extras finale had scenes clumsily edited to mention  ‘DirectTV’ (sic) adverts and Katie Couric, it kept in jokes that the audience wouldn’t understand unless they knew who Robbie From Eastenders is or who Hale & Pace are.) If it doesn’t impress stateside viewers, it’s possible that even the shared cost of production between HBO and the BBC might not be enough to save the show. Maybe they’ll merge the show with Little Britain USA to cut costs. That would be funny. Ha ha.

(*Of course, we’ve only just realised that the title of the film ‘The King’s Speech’ has a double meaning. That’s ‘speech’ as in ‘a prepared written statement to be read to an audience’ AND in the sense of ‘the act of speaking’. Doh, eh? It’s Hill Street Blues all over again.)

(**Coincidentally, HBO have just cancelled the marvellous Bored To Death, the rat bastards. They are now officially on our enemies list.)

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YouTubeXL: More Packed With Entertainment Than Seventeen Double Issues Of The Radio Times (Part Three)

Blah blah TV shows on YouTube blah blah after the ‘jump’ blah blah photo of Tatu.

Is it January yet? Can we stop doing this now?

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YouTubeXL: More Packed With Entertainment Than Seventeen Double Issues Of The Radio Times (Part Two)

Our trawl through the bits of the British television archives that trundled out of Windmill Road and straight onto YouTube continues. Just after, as we hope will soon become traditional, another photo of Tatu.

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YouTubeXL: More Packed With Entertainment Than Seventeen Double Issues Of The Radio Times (Part One)

So, as promised we’ve been on the prowl for more excellent full shows that are available on YouTube. We’ve actually found such a bumper crop, we’re going to have to split them over two updates, and even then use the old ‘read more’ button to try and keep everything relatively neat and tidy.

So, if you’re reading this from the main page of the blog, click the ‘read more’ button just beneath this photo of Tatu. If you’re already reading the full article, hey, here’s a photo of Tatu!

Why Tatu? Because it’s nearly Christmas. It’s our present to ourselves. We haven’t mentioned them for ages. BROKENTV FACT! We’ve gone off The One With The Dark Hair Out Of Tatu, now. Our favourite one out of Tatu is now The Ginger One Out Of Tatu.

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2016! 2016! 2016! (etc)

Too busy to do a proper update today, so here – as seen on 77.2% of all blogs on the internet this weekend – is a thing.

It’s not a one-off either. Here, from the same Ghanaian movie studio, are trailers for Devil May Cry and The Killer.

All this is making us feel the forthcoming BrokenTV Awards 2011 Video Podcasts have relatively high production values after all.

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The Chart Show: BBC Two Comedy Zone Episodes Six

We love Thursday night Comedy Zone on BBC Two. Basically because, as you’ll have grasped by now us chucking the overnight viewing figures into Excel gives us a really easy update each Saturday*. So, instead of us wittering on or providing any kind of insight, on with the numbers. Figures from the Digital Spy forum ratings thread

(*Well, each Friday evening. We love Blogger’s ‘queue post’ function even more than we love the Thursday night Comedy Zone on BBC Two.)

A surge in figures for all three shows this week, due to… circumstances we’re too lazy to research. A huge boost for REV this week (and with good reason, another hugely enjoyable episode), seeing the ratings rise back up to episode two levels. THIS IS TWENTY-EIGHT MINUTES TOO LONG made a recovery too, with an additional 260,000 viewers able to have their intelligence insulted by the scene with the washing machines. Meanwhile, Lord FRANK SKINNER of Sealand’S OPINIONATED increased in popularity for the fourth consecutive week, the final episode of the series saw numbers rise up to 1.4 million.

Series closers for REV and LIFE’S TOO SHORT switch to Tuesday night, so it’ll be interesting to see how each fares. Will the lack of a primetime same-week repeat for SHORT see the first airing of the finale gain even more viewers? Time – more specifically next Wednesday’s MediaGuardian and/or Digital Spy Ratings Thread – will tell.

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YouTube XL: Classic British TV Documentaries In Full

Following on yesterday’s look at films available on YouTube, here’s a delve into the digital factbucket of documentaries made available on there. If you want to queue them all up on your Xbox, PC or whatnot, here’s several of the finest all in one playlist. Or, if you’d like to see them individually, read on.

As with our last collection, all of these are now viewable on Xbox Live’s YouTube app. Go on, even the dullest of these is 758 times more interesting than Call Of Sodding Duty 3.

BBC Synth Britannia (1h28m)

Splendid BBC Four documentary on the rise of electronic music.

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YouTube on Xbox Live: Full Movies You Can Watch. On It.

So, the new Xbox Live dashboard is now available. If you’re like us, you probably nabbed it as soon as possible, then thought “Oh. Right. Is that it?”

Luckily however, ‘it’ is no longer all that ‘that’ ‘is’. By which we mean the proper video apps are now trickling through, most notable of which is YouTube. And that, our fine friends, is A Very Good Thing Indeed. Here’s why: YouTube seem to have really relaxed their tight-ass controls on what people can put online. No longer is everyone limited to ten minutes or less per video. Sprawling epics can now be shared on there. And, what with The Internet being The Internet, it’s not all videos of pets doing amusing things. Yes, it’s mostly videos of pets doing amusing things, but it’s not ALL videos of pets doing amusing things. There are also full films on there, at least until The Man does something about it.

So, until then, here are a few great ones. Open the links in a new window, add them to playlists on your YouTube account as needed, log into your YouTube account on your Xbox, and watch these films in full, for free, on your proper big tellies. (We’ve just tested the first film on our Xbox, and they DO currently work.)

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The Seventh Most Misjudged Attempt At A Christmas Number One of the Early 1990s (That We Meant To Include But Forgot But Then Governmentyard Reminded Us. Of It.)

Hurrah!
But anyway, onto the glaring omission from yesterday’s music rundown. We feel even more ashamed, because us remembering this song was the reason we’d written that blog update in the first place. Boh.
(We’d also forgot to namecheck SOTCAA in the Fist DVD review, too. Without their work on it, we strongly suspect it would have been a noticeably weaker purchase, and their comprehensive sleevenotes that come with the DVD set are thumpingly compelling. Belated thanks, chaps.)

Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine - The Impossible Dream

Year: 1992 Peak chart position: 21

Except… well, we were kind of right not to include it.
We recall the NME trumpeting the fact Jim Bob and Fruitbat had tentatively planned to release their excellent cover of a song originally written for 1965 musical Man of La Mancha just in time to make 1992’s Christmas number one. That was just after lead single from chart-topping LP ‘1992: The Love Album’, The Only Living Boy In New Cross, moshed its way into the top ten, giving the duo their biggest hit to date. From there however, the self-styled “awesomely loud cross between the Pet Shop Boys and Mega City Four” dipped in popularity a little, with follow-up single Do Re Me (So Far So Good) falling outside the top twenty. That after an animated promo video directed by Richard “Roger Rabbit” Williams, to boot*. (*We think. We’re pretty sure we remember the pop-up from The Chart Show at the time correctly. Unless it was directed by someone less senior, it was certainly someone involved in Roger Rabbit though**.) (**Oh, and that video featuring photos of animal testing probably didn’t help it get much daytime rotation on MTV Europe.)
Getting slightly cold feet, record company Chrysalis ended up putting The Impossible Dream out in late November 1992, where it reached a fairly respectable number 21, but had fallen outside the top 75 by the time of the advent rundown. At the time of the release, anyone only vaguely interested in Carter probably already owned the album, though the extra tracks on the EP made it a worthy purchase for their fanboys, especially barnstorming stomper ‘When Thesauruses Ruled The Earth’.
So, not really a missed shot across the bows of The Good Ship Christmas Number One after all, but worthy of inclusion here because it’s such a bloody good version of the song. The truncated version of it in the video up there (on Top Of The Pops) doesn’t quite do it justice, but our search for the proper video on YouTube led us to this video, where the song has been used to soundtrack a photo montage of Barack Obama’s victory in the 2008 US Presidential Election. If you’re asking us (and we’re going to assume you are, because we’re hugely misguided about our popularity), it captures the majesty of the song pretty damn well. It’s so good, we don’t even want to kneecap the uploader who disabled the option of embedding the song elsewhere. It’s THAT good.
-
With thanks to Government Yard. Go visit his blog. Or badger him on Twitter. Or hide in his dustbin and wait for several days, biding your time until he goes out there to take the kitchen rubbish out, then spring out while yelling “I AM THE GHOST OF CHRISTMAS PRESENT! FEAR MY FESTIVE WRAITH!” into his bewildered face.
No, hang on, just the first two.

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The Six Most Misjudged Attempts At A Christmas Number One Of The Early 1990s And A Photograph Of Little Mix to Try And Get Some Google Traffic Trickling In

Above: Jade Thirlwell, Perrie Edwards, Jesy Nelson, Leigh-Anne Pinnock, and the dawning realisation that we’re going to be so far down the Google rankings for those search terms we really, really shouldn’t have bothered

Almost time to find out what this year’s Christmas Number One is*! Except everyone already knows it’s going to be Little Mix off of X Factor. That’s X Factor’s Little Mix and their cover version of Damien Rice’s Cannonball. Sung by Jade Thirlwell, Perrie Edwards, Jesy Nelson and Leigh-Anne Pinnock. Little Mix, X Factor, Little Mix, X Factor, Little Mix, X Factor, X Factor, Little Mix. This is how search engine optimisation works, isn’t it?

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The League Of Funnymen 10: Lee & Herring’s Fist of Fun Series One DVD

TODAY: “It makes me maaaad with power!”

LEE & HERRING’S FIST OF FUN: COMPLETE SERIES ONE

£25 (Go Faster Stripe)

It’s remit-tweaking time here at BrokenTV towers, as our list of stand-up DVDs from 2011 makes room for a sketch comedy from the mid-1990s. Ah, d’you remember the mid-90s, viewers? Trance Europe Express compilations in Our Price, Roy Evans’ swashbuckling Liverpool side never quite winning anything apart from the League Cup, the 3DO being resolutely ignored on the shop shelves of electronic goods retailers, and BBC Two playing host to all manner of excitingly offkilter comedy. Shows like the The Glam Metal Detectives, Is It Bill Bailey?, The Ghostbusters of East Finchley, The High Life, Pulp Video, Fantasy Football League, The All-New Alexei Sayle Show, The Fast Show, In The Red, Does China Exist?, The Saturday/Friday Night Armistice, London Shouting… some good, some bad, some even strangled at the pilot stage, but you have to feel that they’re all precisely the kinds of comedy that wouldn’t be allowed to happen on the BBC in 2011.

Arguably the most popular of all cultish mid-1990s comedy shows – at least if you polled a certain type of comedy fan who has spent way too much time on the internet since about 1997 – featured a tall-but-not-that-tall man called Stewart and a shorter-and-fatter-but-not-really-that-much-shorter-or-fatter man called Richard.

And it’s now out on DVD.

Finally.

And it is good.

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<<PLACEHOLDER BROKENTV TEAM OFF DOING SOMETHING ELSE INSTEAD BLOG UPDATE HEADER TYPE 53>>

C:\Users\BrokenTVHome>cd\

C:\>DIR EMERGENCY_BLOG_UPDATES
Volume in drive C is BrokenTV-O-Tron2000
Volume Serial Number is 01-811-8055

Directory of C:\EMERGENCY_BLOG_UPDATES

03\07\2011  19:57   <DIR>     .
03\07\2011  19:57   <DIR>     ..
07\08\2010  20:53   <DIR>     TATU_VIDEOS_1
07\08\2010  20:53   <DIR>     TATU_VIDEOS_2
07\08\2010  20:53   <DIR>     TATU_VIDEOS_3
07\08\2010  20:53   <DIR>     LEGAL_THREATS_FROM_TATUS_MANAGEMENT
07\06\2010  16:23   <DIR>     STUFF_NOT_EVEN_ABOUT_TELLY
23\11\2011  16:23   <DIR>     GRAPHS_THAT_WE_HOPE_PROVE_US_RIGHT
17\06\2007  23:58   <DIR>     BRAND_NEW_EXCITING_BLOG_IDEAS
27\10\2011  00:01   <DIR>     SCANS_FROM_1970S_TV_TIMES
10\12\2011  21:27   <DIR>     STUFF_FOUND_ON_YOUTUBE

C:\>CD EMERGENCY_BLOG_UPDATES\STUFF_FOUND_ON_YOUTUBE

C:\EMERGENCY_BLOG_UPDATES\STUFF_FOUND_ON_YOUTUBE>QUICKBLOGUPDATE763.BAT

Hello! We’re too busy <<DRINKING/CRYING/BEING STUCK DOWN A WELL/WATCHING OUR NEW FIST OF FUN DVD>> to do a proper update today. Never fear, because in mind of that we bring you an excellent YouTube video of <<A HISTORY OF FAMOUS DRUNKS/THAT BIT IN TOY STORY 3/WHAT IT’S LIKE TO BE STUCK DOWN A WELL/THE ENTIRETY OF LEE & HERRING’S REASONABLY SCARY MONSTERS FROM BBC TWO’S MONSTER NIGHT IN 1999>>.

<<INSERT YOUTUBE EMBED CODE HERE. DON’T FORGET TO DELETE THIS PLACEHOLDER TEXT, YOU IDIOTS.>>

Hurrah! That was <<EMBARRASSING/TRAGIC/DARK/FUN>> wasn’t it? Our favourite bit was when <<WE GOT DRUNK ON THE VERY GIRLIEST OF ALCOPOPS ON OFFER BUT WE’RE SECURE WITH OUR MASCULINITY SO IT’S OKAY/WE STOPPED CRYING/CLAMBERED OUT OF THE WELL/LEE AND HERRING SAID FUNNY THINGS WITH THEIR MOUTHS>>.

Don’t forget to join us again at the same time tomorrow, when we’ll have a much bigger update, almost definitely the next instalment of The World Cup Of TV Comedy, yes, definitely, we wiSYNTAX ERROR UNRECOGNISED STATEMENT
ABORT, RETRY, FAIL?

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The League of Funnymen Part 8: Angelos Epithemiou

Him off Shooting Stars.

ANGELOS EPITHEMIOU & FRIENDS: LIVE

£12.97 (Amazon)

The first thing we wondered when seeing the cover of this was whether the “& Friends” part of the title suggested Renton Skinner would be spending much of the runtime showing off other, less interesting comic creations of his. Luckily for those who have enjoyed his turns alongside Vic and Bob, it’s Angelos all the way on this disc. The ‘friends’ in question tend to be the acquaintances of Epithemiou’s from his supposed everyday life, pictures of whom occasionally flash up on the screen at the back of the stage as we’re told about their antics.

It has been said that Angelos is another example of a comedian lazily mocking disability (cf. The Morgana Show, Gervais circa monggate), but we wouldn’t really go with that. If anything, he plays a slightly naive eccentric who lives in his own version of the world, and the version of the world he’s created for himself is one where he’s the winner at everything. Much like Frank Sidebottom only without the songs or head, and a tad more world-weariness.

Aside from all that, you might be wondering just how a full gig compares to the short bursts of Angelos Epithemiou in Shooting Stars. Pretty well, in fact. If you’re looking to us for a half-baked comparison, it’s not a million miles away from the live shows of Vic Reeves’ Big Night Out. Angelos’ DJ rig is decorated in much the same curious manner as the desk in Big Night Out (there’s even a horsebrass on it), and there’s even a great bit of That’s Justice-ish audience member participation in his ‘game show’ Epithemiou or Bust. While it doesn’t quite hit the heights of that slice of early 90s gold, it’s as close as you’re likely to get to such demented whimsy nowadays, and it’ll be interesting to see how this DVD performs against other more traditional stand-ups.

It’s commendable how Renton Skinner manages to keep in character throughout, even during parts of the audience Q&A where people ask funny questions that get a huge response from the rest of the crowd. He even remains in character at that most annoying occurrence at a DVD-record gig, a couple of selfish oafs in the front row walking out with about three minutes of the gig left.

Overall impressions, then – if you enjoyed his performance in Shooting Stars (or on Never Mind The Buzzcocks the other night), you’ll almost definitely find this DVD an enjoyable way to spend 85 minutes of your winter (or summer if you’re reading this while wondering if you should be buying it from a sale seven months from now). If you’re unconvinced about him, try to give it a watch anyway – being drawn into the world of Angelos properly will let you make up your mind about him properly. Only a few of his gags (such as they are) appeared in Shooting Stars, and they’re pretty much the weaker ones. And he doesn’t do any of the rubbish stuff about Ulrika, because, well, she’s not there. CAVEAT: If you hate comedy where there aren’t any proper jokes or anything, you’ll hate this. If anyone you know has bought you this for Christmas, it’s probably their way of telling you they hate you. You misery.

Us? We really enjoyed it. We certainly found ourselves laughing out loud more often than with most of the DVDs we’ve looked at so far, which puts it pretty high up in our SPECIAL REVAMPED LEAGUE TABLE WHICH ACCOUNTS FOR OVERALL QUALITY RATHER THAN JUST SIMPLE ORDERING.

SAMPLE GAG: “If you find yourself in France, don’t panic. Just lie down on the floor, curl up in a ball, and wait for rescue.”

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The Six Most Unsettling Moments In That BBC One “Consider Yourself” Promo

6. DAVID JASON LURKS

What’s he planning? And why has he got that disturbing grin on his face? Oh, we can’t see it at this resolution, but we can tell. We can just tell. Brr.

5. GRAHAM NORTON WILL EAT YOUR SOUL

Is this Christmas, or a very, very late Halloween promo? Right now, we aren’t sure.

4. LENNY HENRY KISSES BY FALLING ON TOP OF THE PERSON HE IS TRYING TO KISS

What other possible reason could there be for him falling over after Ms Cotton steps aside at the last moment, eh? He’s a big bloke, too.

3. THE TWO OPPOSITE ENDS OF THE COMEDY QUALITY SPECTRUM CLASH

Isn’t Frank Skinner only on BBC Two, anyway? Also: it is too much to hope that despite the above image, there actually isn’t a Christmas special lined up for Mrs Brown’s Boys? Or, as Michael Legge excellently summed up the show, “FUCK FUCK FUCK POTATO FUCK FUCK”.

2. DOT COTTON DROPS ONE

Well, it snapped Norton out of that demonic possession, anyway.

1. DAVID JASON WINKS AT YOU

This is just outright creepy. We know Del Boy is Britain’s favourite sitcom character and everything, and this Christmas marks David Jason’s return to sitcom, but… well, basically, WAH. We actually had to make an animated version of this, just to prove how disturbing it is.

As if the wink isn’t bad enough, the way he looks both ways with a mischievous grin on his face beforehand… why is he checking the coast is clear? What doesn’t he want anyone but us to see? The more we think about it, the more scared we are. In summary: WE WANT TO GO HOME THIS ISN’T FUN ANY MORE.

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The League of Funnymen: Jason Manford Live

 

JASON MANFORD LIVE

£12.93 (Amazon)

A quick addition to our scoreboard of stand-up today, and it’s Salford scamp Jason Manford. With his schtick being “cosy observation”, you can pretty much guess what’ll be coming up here, and there aren’t any surprises on offer. Topics touch on being a parent, obsolete names (“you never see a baby called Geoff any more, do you?”), how the penis adds context to the testicles, lady shampoo, and his dad.

Time for one of our theories about stand-up: while it’s expected that every American comic has to have a routine on airports because they spend so much time flitting between east and west coasts (if they don’t perform such a routine once per gig they probably get kicked out of American stand-up equivalent of The Magic Circle or something), with British comedians it’s ‘driving’. Is this why the British public seem more likely to take stand-up comedians to their collective hearts? Our more compact landmass affording our millionaire mirthmeisters that extra shared experience of motorway service stations while touring the country, while their stateside cousins have to try and remember what it was like the last time they flew coach in 1987 if they want to connect with their audience like that?

Yeah, probably not, it’s only a theory we’ve held for about seventeen minutes. It does mean that when Manford does his bit about driving, including the difficulty of putting petrol in your car to the nearest tenner when filling up, we couldn’t help but lament he’d missed the much better punchline that we thought of. Which is this: “and then, after finally managing to somehow squeeze that final pennyworth of petrol into your car, you go in and pay for it… by card”. See, shared experiences between comedian and audience.

Luckily for Jason Manford, that’s the only bit where we thought of a much better punchline than him (no, it IS a much better punchline, shut up). It certainly helps that he maintains a steady air of The Funniest Bloke At Work, the kind of bloke who you’d be a bit disappointed if you go out on a work ‘do’ and he’s not turned up. (Look, our version of that petrol joke works better because, you know, the guy doing the till isn’t even going to be giving you any change! You might as well just have got £22.43 of petrol! That’s why it’s funny! IT IS!) Unless, of course, you always get annoyed by people like that, in which case this DVD isn’t really going to realign your liking-Jason-Manford-or-not-sensors. But, if you’re a fan of faintly undemanding comedy about things like supermarket self-scan tills, you’re in luck. (Yes, we know there’s pay-at-pump, but then the joke doesn’t work. Look, it’s a valid joke. Leave us alone.)

File under: safe bet Christmas present for brother-in-law.

SAMPLE GAG: “The most commonly searched for term on Google is ‘sex’. That’s too broad a term, surely? It’s like going into Tesco and asking ‘where’d you keep your food?’”

UPDATED TABLE!

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The League of Funnymen: Part Three (Chris Addison Live)

Our ranking of ribaldry rumbles on.

CHRIS ADDISON LIVE

£11.88 (Amazon)

“Star of BAFTA Winning Comedy THE THICK OF IT” screams the cover. Not quite sure why it didn’t mention the Oscar-nommed spinoff In The Loop as well, in which Addison plays a more central role, but there you go. Mind you, if we’d been in charge of designing that cover we’d have gone with “Star of That Sunday Morning Music Programme On UK Play When It Started In 1998, You Know, That One With Lauren Laverne On It As Well, At Least We Think It Was Chris Addison. Oh, And He Did Dotcomedy As Well, But No-One Ever Mentions That Nowadays”. All in the Papyrus font. Mainly because we just hate humanity.

ANYWAY. After several days of diminishing returns on our list (five stand-up DVDs rated so far, each has been ranked lower than the last. More through accident than design, though we do admit we were keener to see the Tim Vine and Milton Jones DVDs than Jimmy Carr’s. From hereon in, we’re looking at DVDs we have no real preconceptions, so these could be placed anywhere in the list. ANYWHERE.

So, Chris Addison, then. Best known for The Thick Of It, in which he didn’t have a hand writing. When he did share penmanship duties on a sitcom, it was the roundly derided Labrats (which we’d personally put down as a gallant effort that just needed a couple more drafts at scripting stage, but we seem to be in the minority there). He has been a bit disappointing when cropping up on Have I Got News For You, but one of the best guests on the current series of QI. (Shush, that’s how comedians are judged nowadays.) He made Channel 4’s list of 100 Greatest Stand-Up, but trying to put on a show that can be put on DVD and sold in supermarkets can do terrible things to a stand-up’s act. WILL IT BE GOOD OR WHAT, THEN?

Topics include the boringness of British roads, the Pope not being able to stand up in the Popemobile any more because of The Taylor Report, the BNP, golf clubs. the cultural identity of the modern Briton, ITV’s current affairs output, and what it’s like being married (as is the law for all stand-up comedians who’ve been performing for more than ten years). All delivered by a 40 year old man seemingly trapped in the body of a sweaty, giggly 27-year-old from the year 1999. And happily, well, it’s enjoyable and many of the things that he says while talking are funny. (“Dear BrokenTV, thank you for applying for the position of chief comedy critic of Newsnight Review. Sadly, that vacancy is no longer available, and you work sadly didn’t quite reach the critical standard required for the position, and seriously, “it’s enjoyable”? God, you’re rubbish. Yours, J Hadlow, Controller, BBC Two.”)

In amongst all the cavorting, picking on nicely unthreatening subjects, material about having to cope with being a slightly ineffectual excuse for a male by any traditional standards (“I’m so non-sexist, I even married a woman. And in many regards, so did she”), there are a few moments of slightly annoying punching down (“imagine if you did crash on an Easyjet flight, eh? On a snowy mountain… would you want to eat those people?” being an especially grating line), but he pretty much makes up for those moments with the remainder of his act revolving around gentle middle-class self-loathing (a huge chunk of this act is even delivered in a self-scarhingly twee Guardian-reader whine).

Harder to take are the routines based on topics pretty much every British stand-up of the last decade has done endless times before (ooh, we’re no good when there’s a bit of snow, are we? Aah, don’t we buy rubbish when drunkenly in charge of the internet? The Daily Mail – bit right wing, innit?), but we just assume those are all based on rants he thought up on the spot while on Mock The Week (#SARCASM. Oh, wait, we’re not on Twitter now). Either way, Addison’s breathless energy, charm, use of the ‘hard a’ when saying the word ‘bastard’ (always wins us over, that), is more likely to mean you’ve got a smile on your face for much of it.

SAMPLE GAG [When talking about universities with vague names like “University of Central England” being substandard compared to other universities]: “U.C.E… so called because those are the grades it takes to get in!”

So, where does this fall on our Top Gear-style table? (If any Chris Addison fans are reading this, Top Gear is that programme about cars. You’re probably watching a box set of The Wire when it’s on.)

Man, we’re going to get annoyed with having to renumber all the entries after we’ve done about twelve of these, aren’t we?

NEXT TIME ON THE COMEDY DVD REVIEW ROUNDUP THAT WE WRITE AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE AND DON’T EVEN BOTHER TO PROOF READ OR REDRAFT: Um, not sure. Possibly Jason Manford Live.

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The Chart Show: BBC Two’s Comedy Zone

"People are straight away thinking it's going to be a cruel comedy – why? Why do they assume that? It's their prejudice.” – Ricky Gervais promoting Life’s Too Short, The Guardian, 4th November 2011.

Yeah, no huge surprise that we’re not a fan of LIFE’S TOO SHORT, though we really didn’t think the first episode was markedly worse than the debut episode of EXTRAS, and the first series of Extras turned out to be ‘quite good’. Sadly though, Life’s Too Short only got worse and worse from the opener onwards. Meanwhile REV, the lead-in for Gervais latest vehicle is remaining hugely enjoyable, while FRANK SKINNER’S OPINIONATED continues to be a fun if undemanding half-hour.

“But, how are they all doing in the ratings?”, you’ll be asking. Welp, us being us, we’ve looked up the overnight figures for every episode of each, and bunged them into a lovely chart.

And here it is:

So, all three shows have declined from a strong set of opening figures, but while viewing figures for Rev seem to be levelling out, and those for Opinionated are pretty solid, Life’s Too Short is in freefall. If you want a comparison, when BBC Two showed the first series of STEWART LEE’S COMEDY VEHICLE, it attracted a fairly solid million or so viewers, despite being a cult comedian telling long routines about books and stuff, and didn’t even have any Hollywood A-list stars or dwarves vomiting onto their own genitalia or anything.

Still, this does give a reason to keep looking out for Life’s Too Short. Why not have your own office How Low Will The Ratings Get For Life’s Too Short By Episode Seven Sweepstake? We’ve done one, and have plucked out the ticket containing ‘700,000 to 720,000 viewers’. Fingers crossed!

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YuleTube.

Did you see what we did there?

Stepping aside from our League Of Funnymen for a day, how about one of our December mainstays? Namely, a ramble through some ephemera of Chrimbles past. (READER’S VOICE: “Oh, good. A YouTube roundup. You’re really pushing the boat out this year, aren’t you?”)

Pfft.

First up, thanks to YouTube (seemingly) relaxing their maximum video length, we have the entirety of groundbreaking BBCvt Christmas Tape WHITE POWDER CHRISTMAS. All in one go, all 35 minutes of it. Lovely.

“And now, let’s change the mood with a few musical numbers.” “Er, excuse me Mr Bendall…” All that. Assuming if the video hasn’t since been removed because of it containing so much of Kentucky Fried Movie, anyway. We’re actually writing all this three days ago.

Hey, remember last Christmas? More markedly, the highlight of the entire Christmas schedule – repeats of The Goodies on late night BBC Two? Brilliant, wasn’t it? And pleasingly, several of the episodes attracted viewing figures more or less on a par with recent episodes of Life’s Twenty-Seven Minutes Too Long Too Short. Lovely. To mark that event, here’s the opening titles to SATURDAY BANANA CHRISTMAS SPECIAL 1978. No dwarves were put in toilets during the making of this introduction.

Last up, friend of the blog Applemask (hey, anyone who doesn’t scream at us down the phone about us owing them money is a friend of ours. We’ve as many as seven friends, you know), and his fifteen-minute gawp at how ITV did Christmas in the past. SPOILER: They didn’t just bung a load of films on and take the rest of the day off, like they do nowadays. Well, except when they did do just that.

Back tomorrow with another thing we probably wrote several days ago!

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