Many believe that this is primarily a comedy show, something to watch casually, for leisure. Nothing could be farther from the truth. As matter of fact, this show is mainly a very serious psychometric test. Clearly, it was designed to measure a person's "general intelligence", to put it in psychological parlance. I'm sure no serious psychologist would disagree that the rate of laughs per sketch can be used as a very good approximation of that elusive mental quality.
One may imagine that it would be easy to cheat on this test just by faking continuous laughs. But Mitchell, Webb & co, in their impressive comic wisdom, dutifully placed bad jokes among their great hits, precisely to prevent such frauds. There is certainly an optimal laughs/sketch rate, and probably even an optimal laugh->sketch matching, but I shall leave these technical details to psychologists to determine.
As a bonus, the show can also be used as an aid in diagnosing psychopathy: it suffices to check whether the subject laughed in the last episode of series four. In fact, the more I watch the episodes, the more correlations I find between certain sketches and certain mental qualities. It is pure scientific genius.
Alas, it seems that the general public did not do very well in these tests: the show was canceled after only four series, what a shame! On the other hand, what could be more flattering than to be rejected by Vectron worshipers who can barely compute numberwang?
The only reason I do not give the show 10 starts is to push these great guys to come up with even better sketches and, most urgently, figuring out a way to publish them -- perhaps by having some arch-villain to intervene in this prosaic issue? To be more blunt: please take my money (again), guys!
One may imagine that it would be easy to cheat on this test just by faking continuous laughs. But Mitchell, Webb & co, in their impressive comic wisdom, dutifully placed bad jokes among their great hits, precisely to prevent such frauds. There is certainly an optimal laughs/sketch rate, and probably even an optimal laugh->sketch matching, but I shall leave these technical details to psychologists to determine.
As a bonus, the show can also be used as an aid in diagnosing psychopathy: it suffices to check whether the subject laughed in the last episode of series four. In fact, the more I watch the episodes, the more correlations I find between certain sketches and certain mental qualities. It is pure scientific genius.
Alas, it seems that the general public did not do very well in these tests: the show was canceled after only four series, what a shame! On the other hand, what could be more flattering than to be rejected by Vectron worshipers who can barely compute numberwang?
The only reason I do not give the show 10 starts is to push these great guys to come up with even better sketches and, most urgently, figuring out a way to publish them -- perhaps by having some arch-villain to intervene in this prosaic issue? To be more blunt: please take my money (again), guys!