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Reviews
Little Britain (2003)
Not Only Bad In Itself, But Harmful To British Comedy In General
Here's my "Little Britain" tale; it refers mainly to the radio version.
A couple of years ago, I started seeing raves about the show in groups like alt.comedy.British and rec.arts.TV.uk.comedy, and the CD of the radio show was highly rated on Amazon.co.uk. I'm quite happy to give things a punt; after all, this is how I got into Chris Morris, "I'm Alan Partridge", "15 Storeys High" and "Peep Show", amongst other excellent things, so I ordered the CD from Amazon.
A week later, the CD arrived at work, and I was very excited. I took it home and put it into my CD player. As I listened my excitement turned to the deepest disappointment and even anger. I'd been sold a pup! The show was the opposite of all the things that I'd expected: it was witless, unthinking, uninsightful, amateurishly written and performed, and deeply unfunny. These things have nothing to do with the potential for giving offence ("Brass Eye", "Blue Jam" and "Jam" are gems), but are about the actual quality of the show. The writing, script editing, direction, and performance were either weak or just outright bad.
I did a double-check on my assessment by lending the CD to a friend. He said he couldn't bear listening to it for more than 15 minutes.
Here's the review I wrote for Amazon.co.uk:
"1 out of 5 stars Very Very Bad Indeed June 11, 2004
The creators of this work are tone deaf to comedy. Unfortunately, they appear to have outed an audience with a similar handicap.
You may have heard the expression "like punk never happened" applied to music. Something similar could be said here, except replacing "punk" with "the last 50 years of progress in comedy".
The contents of these CDs are so bad that my friends and I have entertained ourselves by mutilating them so that they might produce some sort of amusing output.
Kill to avoid."
I'd have given 0 stars if that was possible. If I'd thought of it at the time, I'd have described it as the audio you're forced to listen to when your telephone call is put "on hold" in Hell.
I've been unfortunate enough to catch bits of the television version, and the same problems persist.
I have a terrible feeling that those of us now alive are seeing out the end of the Enlightenment. The success of "Little Britain" only reinforces that fear.
Punk: Attitude (2005)
My Memories Rendered Worthless
There's an old time-travel conundrum that goes "What would happen if a time-machine allowed you to go back and kill your own grandfather?" Keep this in mind while I make a small digression.
I was a teenager in the late 1970s and early 1980s. I lived in Brisbane, and while I was only ever on the very periphery of the music scene, it seemed that something fairly special was happening. This is something I lived through, albeit mostly vicariously (I was, and still am, painfully shy), but about which I have some fond and vivid memories of what might loosely be called the punk and post-punk scene.
I've recently seen the film "Punk: Attitude", and I'm now convinced that Punk Never Happened. Somehow the director has invented the hypothetical time-machine, and gone back, and replaced what happened with something witless, vapid, inert and, above all, crushingly unspecial.
I feel that a part of me has been erased and replaced with corporate switchboard hold music.